Damaged Goods
by Caskett54
Summary: Castle picks up his phone, expecting to hear Beckett's voice. Instead, it's Ryan, reporting something that shakes the foundations of Castle's world - Beckett's missing.
1. Chapter 1

Castle's fingers flew across the keyboard; a constant cacophony of tiny clacks filled his office as he typed up a new chapter in his next Nikki Heat book. One would think that after a while, he would tire of writing the words 'Detective Heat', but he never did. Possibly this was because every time he typed it, he could see her in his mind's eye. Hazel eyes, arms crossed in front of her chest, golden-brown locks spilling down around her shoulders. She would be smiling at him, obviously in one of her better moods; he would smile back at her before returning to his writing, bidding her farewell until the next time he wrote her fictional alias's name.

"Richard, darling!" His mother's voice echoed brightly from the doorway, but he didn't take his eyes off his computer screen, instead putting up one finger while continuing to type with the other hand – a skill which he never failed to impress himself with. "One second," he said absentmindedly, before bringing his hand back to the keyboard and completing his sentence. Only then did he save the document and look up from his laptop. "Yes?"

Martha Rodgers was just outside his office, curls of short orange hair framing her aging face, holding herself like she was someone of great importance. From one hand, she dangled a vibrantly orange dress; in the other, she clasped a hanger holding a rather shiny dark blue blouse and a black skirt. "For my audition today," she said pompously, lifting both of her hands to indicate that she couldn't decide on an outfit.

"Really, Mother?" Castle replied, raising his eyebrows. "You're asking me for fashion advice?"

Martha was silent for a moment, her face frozen with her mouth slightly open, before replying, "Good point," and walked away, no doubt going to find Alexis and ask her opinion.

Shaking his head slightly, Castle lifted his favorite Richard Castle mug to his lips and sipped the scalding coffee inside. Replacing the mug on the desk next to him, he returned to his writing, still smiling slightly to himself every time he typed Nikki's name.

Still, he only had a few minutes of peace before Alexis rushed through the doorway of his office, her black flats making nearly no sound as they collided with the floor. Her orange curls, so similar to her grandmother's, swung side to side as she ran, but came to rest against her back when she stopped in front of his desk. She wore light blue jeans, worn on the fronts, and an argyle sweater in a variety of shades, ranging from lightest blue to white.

"Going somewhere?" Castle asked, typing as he talked. It was late on a Saturday morning, but Alexis had arrived with the attitude she normally had when declaring that she was leaving for school.

"Study session with Taylor and Paige. Don't worry," she added quickly. "Paige's mom is driving us."

"I wasn't worried." Castle finished the sentence he was typing and looked up. "Be home in time for dinner?"

Alexis smiled sweetly. "Of course. Exams aren't until Friday, anyways." And before her father could begin chiding her on studying an entire week before exams, she hurried around to his side of the desk, kissed him quickly on the cheek, and fled the room.

Once again, Castle was left alone with his computer; once again, he resumed telling the tale of Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook. This time, he actually managed to write for twenty minutes straight before his phone began to ring.

Instantly, he brightened up. A murder to solve – a murder to solve with Beckett, at that – would make this typical boring Saturday into something much more enjoyable. Granted, Gina, his publisher and ex-wife, may just murder _him _if he didn't finish the first draft of his manuscript soon… but as he grabbed his phone from the desk and answered it without bothering to look at the caller ID, he decided he could worry about that later.

"Castle."

"It's Ryan." The male detective's voice was not what Castle had expected – or hoped – to hear, but maybe Beckett's phone was dead. Maybe she had called in sick. A murder without Beckett wasn't quite the same as a murder with Beckett, but he still would rather be crime-solving with the boys than stuck in his apartment writing. "Get to the precinct, ASAP."

Something in Ryan's voice gave Castle pause; he stood, already moving towards the door. "Ryan, something wrong?"

The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity. Castle was standing at the door of his apartment, having put on his shoes and his coat, with his car keys dangling from his hand, when Ryan finally replied.

"It's Kate."


	2. Chapter 2

If there were ever two words to send a chill down Castle's spine, they were 'It's Kate'.

"I'm on my way," he told Ryan, fighting to keep his voice neutral as he threw open the door. Hanging up and shoving his phone into his pocket, he pulled it closed behind him; in his haste, he didn't bother to lock it. He simply took off down the corridor, walking at top speed, unable to think of anything but Kate. Ryan hadn't elaborated, hadn't told him what had happened. Castle hadn't asked him to. Now, that seemed the obvious thing to do, and he cursed himself for not thinking to demand that Ryan tell him exactly what was wrong with Kate.

_What was wrong with Kate… _he hated even thinking it. Hadn't she been through enough already? Her mother's murder, her apartment exploding when an obsessive Nikki Heat fan was trying to kill her, being locked in a freezer, nearly drowning, PTSD… she'd been shot, for crying out loud! There had to be a limit to the number of terrible things that could happen to a single person, especially a single person as amazingly good as Kate. She didn't deserve any of this. He supposed that as a homicide detective, she couldn't help but go looking for trouble… but trouble didn't find Ryan and Esposito the way it found her. It simply wasn't fair.

And so, with a thousand thoughts running through his mind – none of which were likely to help whatever the situation with Kate was – he headed for the Twelfth.

Forty minutes later, he was standing just outside Kate Beckett's apartment. He'd driven like a maniac to the precinct, only to be ushered into Ryan and Esposito's car. No one spoke much during the drive. Ryan didn't say a word; he seemed to be on the verge of tears, forcing himself to remain strong, afraid that opening his mouth would ruin his act, blow his cover. So when Castle asked what – exactly – was going on, it was Esposito who responded, telling him, in as few words as possible, that Kate had vanished.

Vanished. As in, into thin air, without a trace, vanished. Neither was exactly true, Castle realized, as he stepped across the threshold into Kate's home. A vase lay, shattered, on the ground, tiny bits of colored glass scattered around; popcorn littered the floor, having spilled out of a bright red plastic bowl; there was a dark red stain on the carpet, and for a terrible second, Castle thought it was blood. Then, seeing the broken wine glass on the ground next to it, he relaxed. Red wine. Not Kate's blood. Just red wine.

Still. Vanished. Disappeared. Gone.

And that other word, the one everyone seemed to be avoiding, as if uttering it would somehow make it true.

Kidnapped.

"Signs of a struggle." Castle looked up at the voice – a woman in a Forensics jacket was speaking to Esposito. She had a round face, pale skin, wide brown eyes, and dirty blonde hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. She was young, younger than Beckett – mid-twenties, probably – and she held a clipboard in one blue-gloved hand and a ballpoint pen in the other.

"Entry doesn't appear to have been forced," the Forensics woman continued, tapping her pen against the top of her clipboard. "Possibly she knew the perp, but I'd say it's more likely that she opened the door to see who it was." Lowering her clipboard, she pointed at the broken vase with her pen. "I'd guess she picked that up and smashed it into her attacker's head. There's no blood on the vase, but look." She crouched down next to the vase, placing her clipboard on the ground beside her, and pulled something out of her pocket – tweezers. Using them, she picked something extremely small up from the floor next to the vase, placed it in the palm of her hand, and held it out for Esposito to see.

Moving over to have a look, it took Castle a few seconds to figure out what the tiny fleck of white in the Forensic woman's hand was. He landed on the word a split second before Esposito said it.

"Dandruff."

"Exactly." The woman shoved the tweezers back into her pocket and brushed the dandruff off her hand, picking up her clipboard and standings. "There's also a bit of blood nearby – a trail of drops, actually, leading to the bathroom. I'd guess that one of them ended up with a bloody nose, most likely the perp, and he went to grab a tissue after knocking Beckett out."

There it was. Up until then, the nameless blonde Forensics woman had not said Kate's name. Up until then, Castle had been able to make-believe that this was just another case, not a case centered around one of the people he cared about the most.

Not anymore.

"Whether it was Beckett, her attacker, or both who ended up bleeding," the Forensics woman was saying. "She didn't go down without a fight."

"Of course she didn't." Castle's words were soft, barely audible, and the misery in his voice was very nearly palpable.

"Mr. Castle." She recognized him. Of course she recognized him. "Forgive me for being blunt," she said, "but I was under the impression that you shadowed Detective Beckett as inspiration for your character of Nikki Heat."

Under the impression… as if she didn't know. There had been a freaking magazine article on it, for crying out loud. Everyone knew. "That's right."

"Well… again, forgive me… if that's the case, what purpose do you have here?" Her lips were pursed, her head tipped to the side. "What reason do you have for coming?"

Castle looked up, disbelief and something close to anger on his face. "I'm helping to find my partner," he replied; his tone was quiet, but deadly. "I'd say that's a pretty good reason."

"Right. Of course. Sorry." Without another word, she turned and scampered away.

Esposito turned to Castle. "Cut her a little slack, okay?" It was a suggestion, not an order. Not a demand. "Avery's new."

"Esposito, Kate is missing," Castle replied. There. He'd said it. It didn't make it any more real. Not any more real than it already was. "Until we find her," he continued, "I'm not cutting anyone a little slack."

Esposito nodded. "Okay, bro." He didn't argue. He just turned and went to talk to one of the other Forensics. Ryan was still standing in the doorway, clutching a pad of paper in one hand and a pen in the other. The tip of the pen hovered just above the pad, ready to jot down notes from witness statements, but Ryan didn't look like he was going to be writing anything any time soon. He nodded curtly at Castle, his mouth still firmly shut, and turned away.


	3. Chapter 3

Katherine Beckett opened her eyes.

It didn't make any difference. Wherever she was, it was pitch-black. It was cold and damp, rather musky – a basement, maybe. That would explain the complete lack of light. The room was as silent as it was dark. And – probably most importantly – she was tied to a chair. Ropes wrapped around her ankles bound them tightly to the front two legs of the chair; her arms had been pulled around behind the back of the chair, her wrists tied together; a band of thick ropes pressed her back and the back of the chair together; and a piece of duct tape covered her mouth.

Behold, the cliché.

Many, many things had happened to Kate. Kidnapping was not one of them. Not until now.

Not knowing what to do was a very disorienting feeling.

The ropes were way too tight to wriggle her hands out of, and she couldn't reach the knot. The same thing applied to the ones around her ankles. She could remember a movie she saw once, where the protagonist was kidnapped and tied to a chair. She was pretty sure he'd gotten up and managed to walk to a counter with a knife, even with his legs bound to the chair legs. She wasn't sure – she'd only seen the movie once, and it was a long time ago. It had been a really bad movie.

It barely took her two seconds to figure out that the movie was anything but realistic.

She set the back legs of the chair back on the ground with a thump. The sound echoed throughout the room, bouncing off the walls and flying back towards her. Then, as quickly as it came, it dissipated, fading into the darkness.

But another sound followed it, something much more chilling.

A laugh.

It was a girlish giggle, young and high-pitched and disturbing. Like something from a bad horror film. There was a small click, and light exploded from a tiny, singular point just a few yards away from Kate.

A flashlight. Held in thin-fingered hands with long, red fingernails. Pointed upwards at a sharp, pretty face.

The woman standing there couldn't have been more than twenty-five. She looked closer to twenty. Her raven-black hair had been chopped short, so that it framed a sort of triangle around her face. Her eyes were darkest brown, almost black, thin and slightly slanted. She had high cheekbones and hollow, concave cheeks, giving the impression that she was once beautiful, but something stole that beauty from her; her face was thin, her chin and nose sharp and pointed, and her lips pursed. She was small, probably between 5 feet and 5'6, and based solely on her face, Kate would guess that she had long, skinny legs and arms and a pencil-thin waist.

The woman giggled again, stepped forward, and yanked the duct tape – rather painfully – from Kate's mouth. "Don't bother screaming," she said quickly, and her voice was as high and childish as her laugh. "No one can hear you. Although," she added, pressing the tip of one bony finger to her lower lip, "you're not really one to scream, are you? Tough-little-Katie-girl, aren't you?" She let out another giggle.

There were a thousand things Kate could've said – anything from 'Let me go or I'll shoot you' (which wouldn't really work, seeing as her hands were tied and she had no gun) to 'Don't call me Katie' to 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH'. She settled on the option with the fewest words.

"Who are you?"

The glee dropped off of the woman's face; her full lips curved down in an exaggerated pout. "Katie," she simpered. "I'm hurt." She shrugged. "Honestly, I'm not surprised you don't remember. It was a long time ago. I was a lot younger." She giggled slightly. "You were, too. Pretty little baby Katie, a brand-new homicide detective. So proud to have made it to where she was. So proud to make an arrest. So proud to destroy lives."

"What are you talking about?" Kate demanded. She acted as though she knew her… someone Kate had arrested, perhaps? But if Kate had been new to homicide when she arrested this woman, it would've been years ago… this woman would've been a teenager, probably not even eighteen yet. Kate rarely arrested teenagers, and she couldn't remember anyone who looked like this woman.

"You really don't remember." The woman shook her head slowly. "Do you have any idea how horrible you are, Katie? How unbelievably ignorant, how terribly, pathetically naïve?"

"I'm not naïve."

"You are naïve!" The woman was practically shrieking now. "You take people away from their families, you ruin lives, and you say you're doing good!"

"I get dangerous murderers off the streets," Kate replied, fighting to keep her voice level.

"_Liar!" _The woman's voice was shrill and loud, too loud to be coming from such a frail-looking creature. For nearly a full minute after her outburst, she stood still, panting, staring at Kate with a wild, mad look in her eyes. Kate stared right back at her, her expression hard and emotionless, unmoving.

Finally, the woman plunged a hand into her pocket – at least, that's what it seemed like she was doing. Kate couldn't see any part of her but her face. "Here," she said, pulling something out and shining the flashlight on it; it was a wad of crumpled paper, folded up into a tiny square. "Maybe this will jog your memory," she muttered, unfolding it and holding it out for her to see.

It was a photograph, and a pretty old one. It was rather wrinkled, and the lines on which it had been folded formed a grid of little squares all across the image. The colors were dim and faded, and the edges were rough and worn. The image showed a girl and a boy; the girl was a teen, between fourteen and seventeen, and the boy was probably in his late twenties. The picture had probably been taken in winter – both wore large, puffy parkas and winter hats, and the girl had a knit scarf wrapped around her neck. They were very close to the camera – their heads and shoulders, the only parts of their bodies visible, obscured whatever might have been behind them. They were pressing their heads together, their hair – raven black, the same for both of them – mingling so you could not tell which strands belonged to which person. The resemblance between the two did not stop with their hair. They had the same eyes, dark and slanted; their noses were both small and pointed; and they wore identical crazy grins – the sort of smile that conveyed pure, unbridled happiness, the sort of happiness that made no sense, but that you didn't question because you had never felt so unbelievably good.

Kate's eyes were drawn to the girl in the picture, the younger of the two people. She was quite beautiful, with a round, childlike face, full lips, long, straight hair that framed her face and then pressed into her neck, bound there by the scarf, and cheeks turned red by the cold. In her mind, Kate aged the girl five or six years. She cut her dark hair short, made her nose, chin, and cheekbones more pronounced, and hollowed out her cheeks.

The change was unbelievable, but unmistakable. The girl in the picture and the woman who stood before her were one and the same.

For the first time, Kate noticed words in the upper right-hand corner of the picture, written in fading black Sharpie. _C and D – Canada for Christmas! _

C and D. First initials, almost definitely. C… Calvin. Christopher. Cameron. Carter. Provided that C was the boy. Or if C was the girl, the woman… Claudia. Candice. Cassandra. Callie. Cindy. Celia. Cornelia.

Cornelia…

"Cordelia."

Kate barely whispered the name, but it was enough to cause the woman's face to curve up into a grin. "I knew you remembered."

Gazing at the photo, Kate could remember a case from years and years ago, long before she began working with Richard Castle. The murder of a twenty-something girl named Bethany. Bethany… Lancaster, she thought. Shot dead in her own apartment. It had been your basic angry-ex case – the man she arrested for the murder was the boyfriend that Bethany had broken up with about a month prior. A man named Evans.

Davis Evans.

D.

Kate remembered Cordelia – the sweet, devoted younger sister of the killer. Even with all of the evidence, even when Davis Evans confessed, she still refused to believe that her brother was behind Bethany's brutal murder. The last time Kate saw her, Cordelia was leaving the precinct, casting her a look of deepest loathing…

"That's what this is?" Kate asked. "Some misguided quest for revenge? You're still angry with me because I figured out what your brother did?"

"You put him in prison for a crime he didn't commit!" Cordelia shrieked, angrily shoving the photograph back into her pocket.

"He confessed!"

"_Liar!" _Again with that word; again with the high-pitched tone of frantic, desperate anger. "You're a liar," she repeated. "Davie wouldn't confess. He didn't confess. You're a liar."

"I'm not lying," Kate replied vehemently. "I have it on tape, all of it. It's at the precinct. I can show you, we can go and get it –"

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Cordelia was literally shaking with pure rage. "Do you think I was born yesterday? I know exactly what'll happen if I let you anywhere that place? You'll arrest me! You will, won't you? I know you will, don't deny it! You'll arrest me for doing what's right, for punishing those who have done wrong. No." She shook her head. "No. I'm sorry, Katie, but I can't let that happen." And then she was in front of Kate, right in front of Kate, with her little flashlight in one clawed hand and a kitchen knife in the other. The light glinted and reflected sharply off the blade. "I have to do this, Katie, love. For Davie."


	4. Chapter 4

The unfamiliar jewelry seemed to weigh her down as she trudged down the street, doing her best to avoid the puddles that had formed in dips in the sidewalk. It had rained earlier that day, an intense mother of a storm that had threatened to rip to pieces the little coffee shop where she had spent the day. The walls had seemed fragile and weak, vulnerable to attack by wind and water; the rain beat against the large windows with a fierceness that simple water droplets should not have possessed. Now, all that was left of the storm was a few wispy gray clouds that floated in the evening sky and the puddles that littered the ground.

A small splash registered in her ears, and she looked down; despite her best efforts to keep dry, one of her feet had landed in a puddle. Tiny beads of water had attached themselves to the brown leather boots – her brown leather boots, she supposed. They did fit unbelievably well. Though she'd have to give them back soon. A large part of her wanted desperately to get them as far away from her as possible, to completely forget that she had any part in this whole affair. People who did this kind of thing didn't get away with them. At least, not on TV. But she had to admit, the plan was ingenious, the opportunity far too perfect to miss out on. There were downsides, of course – everything about her felt foreign, and she rather missed the hair she'd had to cut off. Not to mention the paranoia.

She barely stopped herself from letting out a tiny scream when someone stepped right in front of her, clearly blocking her path. But looking up into the person's face, she relaxed. "Hey," she said brightly. "Has there been a change of plans?"

"Yes," the person replied, and there was something strange about the way they said the single word, something odd in their tone, something that made her pause. "There has been." The person looked around nervously, reached back behind them, and pulled something out.

That was the last thing she saw.

"I'm going to go and check up on some of the people Kate put in prison, see if any of them have been released recently. Feel like helping?"

Esposito had stayed behind at Kate's apartment with the Forensics team, but Castle and Ryan had returned to the precinct. Ryan seemed focused on keeping as busy as possible – he was walking towards his desk with an air of determination, ready to go through all of the cases Kate had ever solved, all of the murderers she had ever put away. Castle, on the other hand, did not move; he stood several feet away from Kate's desk, from his chair, as though fear and worry and guilt were keeping him from getting close to it.

"You coming?" Ryan called.

You coming. She said that. He'd lost count of the number of times she'd said that to him.

"What if it's not someone she arrested?" Castle asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. "What if it's something else?"

Ryan, being rather intelligent, immediately saw where Castle was going. "Her mother's murder."

"What if –"

"No." Ryan shook his head. "No, it can't be. Montgomery died to keep her safe. She's untouchable."

"I know, just… what if." Castle didn't say what he was thinking – that Kate was only safe as long as she stayed away from the case. He didn't say what he feared – that somehow his poking around, his investigating her mother's murder, had led to this, that somehow he had caused this. That somehow all of this was his fault.

"No," Ryan repeated. "Come on. We should get started."

"Yo!" Esposito had emerged from the elevator and was speed-walking towards Ryan and Castle. "We've got a homicide on West 32nd. I'm driving."

"Wait, what?" Castle turned to Esposito, an expression of disbelief on his face. "Esposito, we, we don't have time for that! We have to find Kate!"

"I know, bro," Esposito replied. "But it's not like we're the only ones looking for her. We're homicide detectives. Right now, we've got a homicide to solve."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but Beckett is missing!"

"We're her friends, too, you know," Ryan said, standing. "We want to find her just as much as you do. But we can't put our lives on hold to look for her."

"The hell we can't!" Castle shook his head angrily. "Look. We don't know where she is. We don't know who took her. We don't know what she's going through. She could be bleeding out right now. She could be dead!"

As soon as he said it, he regretted it.

Dead. Kate. Dead. The thought was almost too unbearable to allow into his mind. A world without Kate was unthinkable. A world without Kate was miserable.

A world without Kate was not a world he wanted to live in.

_She will make it through this, _he told himself. _She has to._

_She has to, because if she doesn't, I don't think I will, either._

"Come on, bro." Esposito patted the back of Castle's shoulder lightly as the three began walking towards the elevator. "A murder should take your mind off things. And once we've found our killer, we can start looking for Kate."


	5. Chapter 5

"What've we got?"

Castle, Ryan, and Esposito had arrived at the crime scene – 32nd street, practically right at the base of the Empire State Building. The body of a girl lay splayed out on the sidewalk. She looked to be around eighteen, but it was hard to tell – her face had been completely ripped apart. Blood stained her pale blond hair, which curled in little wisps down to her shoulders and no further. She wore a draped gray shirt with the head of a shocked-looking Mickey Mouse on the front, tight black jeans, a cropped green denim jacket, and brown leather boots with lots of buckles and straps. Lanie was crouched beside her body; when Esposito called to her, she looked up, and, seeing the three boys walking towards her, stood.

"Cause of death is three bullets to the face," she replied. "A little bit of overkill, if you ask me."

"Maybe whoever killed her wanted to wipe her identity," Castle suggested. "She's completely unrecognizable."

"If that's the case, they didn't to a very good job of it. Her wallet is gone, but she's wearing other forms of ID."

"Such as?" Ryan asked, pulling his pad of paper out of his pocket.

"Well, there's this." Lanie bent down by the body again and picked up one of the girl's hands. Glittering on her pinky finger was a small silver ring, ornately engraved with the name _ANGIE. _

"Angie?" Esposito tipped his head to the side, peering down at the ring.

"Yup," Lanie said.

"Angie could be short for any number of names," Castle said. "Angel, Angelina, Angelica."

"I know," Lanie replied. "Thankfully, she's also got this." She reached down to the girl's neck, grabbed a silver chain between two fingers, and pulled. A small, silver rectangle was yanked from underneath the girl's denim jacket; it dangled from the chain, telltale letters carved into its smooth surface.

"Dog tags," Esposito said.

"Dog tags," Lanie agreed. "Of a sort. They've got a name, an address, and a cell phone number."

"Well?" Castle asked. "Who is she?"

"Angela Riley Duchamp." Lanie read the name off the dog tag. "Uniforms are heading to her address to bring in her parents. Also, I found this in her pocket."

She held out a rather crumpled slip of paper; Ryan shoved his pad back into his pocket and took it from her, unfolding it and holding it away from him so that Castle and Esposito could see it too. It was a yellow Post-It note, with a few words scrawled on it in messy script, the letters thick and black.

_**RV ESB – 2**_

"What's RV?" Ryan asked, tipping his head to the side.

It took Castle a moment, but he got there eventually. "Rendezvous," he said. "RV is rendezvous."

"That's what I figured," Lanie replied. "ESB would most likely be –"

"Empire State Building," Esposito cut in, nodding to the skyscraper that towered behind them.

"Right," Lanie agreed. "I'm estimating time of death between one and three AM, so the two would probably be two o' clock. Whatever this rendezvous was about, she was killed on the way to it."

"The only people I can think of who would have a rendezvous at two in the morning are spies and people into something illegal," Castle said. "Looking at this girl, I would say that the latter is probably much more likely than the former."

"Agreed." Lanie nodded. "I would guess that she got in over her head in something – drug trafficking, maybe. She got cold feet, wanted out, and whoever she was meeting with killed her instead. Now, if you don't mind, I need to get Miss Duchamp back to the morgue. You three should go and talk with the family."

The three men nodded and turned, walking back towards the car; Castle lingered the longest, and as he turned to leave, Lanie grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. When he looked back over his shoulder at her, her face was full of anguish and worry.

"Any news?" she asked, desperation in her tone, and Castle knew instantly – before she even spoke, really – that she was thinking of Kate.

"No," he replied sadly. "But we'll find her. Ryan and I are going to check on the people that she put in prison, see if anyone's been released recently."

Lanie nodded. "Alright. Keep me posted."

"I will. Don't worry," Castle added. "I won't rest until I know she's safe."

Lanie raised her head a little, a knowing smile playing on her lips. "I know you won't," she said.

And then she turned and went to take the body to the morgue.

And he turned and went to talk with the victim's family back at the precinct.

But neither one's thoughts turned away from Kate.

Four hours into Kate's imprisonment, nothing had changed.

Nothing had really happened at all. On the upside, Cordelia Evans had yet to torture or kill her. On the downside, Ryan and Esposito had yet to burst into the room with guns and flashlights and bulletproof vests and save the day.

Cordelia sat in a chair a few yards in front of Kate. She had left briefly to exchange her tiny LED flashlight for a large, heavy-looking camping lamp, which she set on the floor next to her. She hadn't said a word in four hours; rather, she just sat there, her presence adding a layer of anger and madness to the vibe of the room. She never seemed to tire of turning her kitchen knife over in her hands, and ever fifteen minutes or so, she would turn and smile at Kate. Just smile. It was a twisted, evil smile, though, the kind of smile that could make even a grown woman like Kate want to run and hide, curl up someplace small and dark where the bearer of that smile could never find her. It was the kind of smile that only someone who had lost all grip on reality and sanity could give. And when Cordelia smiled it, it carried a message. It meant that she was enjoying this, every minute of this. It meant that she loved the way she and her knife and her smiles made Kate squirm. It meant that in every moment of Kate's captivity, Cordelia was exacting her revenge in simple little ways like flashing her prisoner smiles of insanity, but eventually that wouldn't be enough. Eventually she would have to elevate, or it wouldn't be fun anymore.

Kate just sat there, tied to her chair. When they had finished their conversation, Cordelia had plastered fresh duct tape over Kate's mouth, which was not only humiliating, but also exceedingly uncomfortable. For a while, she had worked at it, trying to get it off. But after about an hour of that, Cordelia turned and gave her one of her maleficent grins, brandishing her knife threateningly, and Kate decided that even if she did get the duct tape off, it wouldn't help because only Cordelia would be able to hear her, and she'd just put on more duct tape. And, from what Kate had seen of Cordelia, even a simple act of disobedience like that might push her over the edge.

Further over the edge than she already was, anyway.

So she decided to deal with the duct tape over her mouth, and resigned herself to trying to free her hands. But the rope was too thick and the knots were too tight and after about an hour and a half of trying, her wrists were rubbed raw, her fingers ached, and she'd dug her nails into her palm too many times to count.

She didn't give up, of course. Kate Beckett was not one to give up. Not easily, at least. But there was nothing wrong with taking a short break from endless, painful vying for freedom.

So she spent the next hour and a half silent, unmoving, impossibly cooperative. She imagined that she was someplace else. She tried not to look at Cordelia's creepy smiles. She dreamed up ways she could escape, though few of them were plausible. Some held a level of crazy impossibility worthy of Richard Castle.

Castle.

Imagining and avoiding and plotting could only take up so much time. So she daydreamed.

She daydreamed about Ryan and Esposito breaking down the door and charging into the room.

She daydreamed about Cordelia with her hands cuffed behind her back.

She daydreamed about Ryan untying her bonds while Esposito led her kidnapper away.

Most of all, she daydreamed about Castle.

In the beginning, the daydreams made sense. Ryan and Esposito would rescue her, lead her out wherever this place was where she was being kept prisoner. And waiting for her outside would be Castle, and he would embrace her and run his fingers through her hair, and she would rest her head against his shoulder and feel the warm steadiness that Castle brought to everything. And she would know that everything would work out just fine.

But as the hours wore on, the fantasies drifted further and further away from reality. And by the end of the fourth hour, Kate was all dolled up in a pretty white dress, with her hair falling in curls around her cheeks and a simple silver circlet around her head. She was trapped in a very tall, very dark tower, guarded by a dragon with knives for claws and a terrible smile. But Castle showed up, and he shot the dragon in the head, and then he climbed up the tower and turned on the lights. For whatever reason, despite Kate's royal attire, Castle's clothes were unchanged – he wore the same sort of suit that he always did. But Princess Kate didn't care that her rescuer was not exactly a knight in shining armor. It made no difference, because he swept her up into his arms just as any good knight would and carried her down the stairs of the tower, into the sunlight. It made no difference that his horse was bright red and named Ferrari, because he pulled her up onto it and rode away with her just the same, into the brilliant sunset, just like in all the fairytales.

And then he gave her gun back.


	6. Chapter 6

It felt wrong.

It felt like he was giving up on her. Silly, he knew. It wasn't a big thing, but somehow, it was significant. It felt wrong.

But still, Castle picked up his chair and moved it from Beckett's desk to Ryan's. Every step seemed forced and painful, like he was walking away from what he wanted, what he needed, settling for second-best.

It wasn't just him; when he sat down, Ryan looked up with a surprised expression on his face. He recovered quickly, though, turning his eyes back to his computer and typing furiously.

"Angela or Kate?" Castle asked, leaning to look at the computer screen.

"Kate," Ryan replied softly after a second. "But if Gates asks, Angela."

Castle nodded. "Get anything?"

"Nothing so far." Ryan sighed. "So far, I've only found one person who Kate put in prison who got out. But that was two years ago, and this guy died a few months afterward."

"Murdered?"

Ryan shook his head. "Cancer."

"So that's a dead end." Castle stared down at the floor. "What if –"

"No," Ryan interrupted. "I told you. This is not connected to her mother's murder. They won't come anywhere near her so long as she stays away from the case, remember? And she hasn't been investigating."

"Yeah, but…" On the verge of confession, he faltered. Could he admit to it? Lying to all of them, lying to Kate? But he had to. He had to come clean. With Kate's life in the balance, with the very real possibility that he was responsible… he had no choice.

"But I have."

For the longest time, Ryan didn't say a word. It was as if he was frozen, his expression unbelievably neutral. But Castle could feel it emanating from him – the disbelief, the shock, the disapproval.

The betrayal.

Finally, his voice soft, Ryan said, "You've been looking into her mother's murder."

Castle just nodded.

"Behind her back."

Another nod.

"Again."

Castle made a sort of a choked noise that may have been intended to be a cynical laugh. "Yes."

Ryan shook his head. "Bro, why didn't you tell us?"

"That's what you're upset about?"

"Well, investigating it after telling her to back down was wrong. But lying to us was worse."

"Don't you understand?" Castle pushed a hand through his hair anxiously. "If this has to do with her mother's murder, it's my fault! I'm the one who's been investigating, not her, but… what if I pushed too hard? What if they caught me looking into it and took her?"

Ryan thought on this for a second. "That doesn't make sense. Why would they take her, not you?"

"It makes perfect sense," Castle replied darkly. "If it's a warning."

"Hey!" Esposito was walking towards them; he'd been assigned the job of talking with the victim's parents. Castle could see the two walking out of the precinct – they were a middle-aged couple, both blond, small, and good-looking.

Esposito stopped in front of Ryan's desk, took one look at Ryan and Castle's faces, and asked, "Find anything?"

Ryan shook his head. "No. Where are we on Angela?"

"According to her mother, she spent the day at a Starbucks on 6th Avenue," Esposito replied. "Said she was working on a novel. But guess what we didn't find with Angela's body."

"A laptop," Castle answered instantly.

"Exactly," Esposito agreed. "So either she lied about where she was, or her killer took the laptop. Thankfully, there's an easy way for us to find out."

"What?"

"There's a security camera on the street just outside the Starbucks. If Angela sat close to the window, we should be able to see what she was doing. I'm working on getting the footage sent over now."

"Great," Ryan said. "You need any help?"

He didn't want to know if Esposito needed help. Castle could tell. He wanted to know if it was okay for him to keep looking for Kate.

Esposito shook his head. "Nah. I got this." Then he turned and walked away.

Ryan didn't immediately return to his search. He sat still, doing nothing, for long enough for Castle to work up the nerve to ask the question on his mind.

"What do we do now?"

Ryan sucked in a deep breath. "Now," he replied, "we keep looking for anyone who might've had a grudge against Kate." He turned to Castle, the look on his face bordering on morbid. "And we cross our fingers and hope that you're wrong."


	7. Chapter 7

Kate was pulled violently out of her daydreams by the first real sound she'd heard in hours.

Fortunately, it wasn't Cordelia's wicked laugh.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the thud of the door being broken down, surrounded by a symphony of footsteps and yells of "NYPD!"

No, it was something much more neutral.

It was a phone ringing.

It took her a second to figure out that that was what it was, though. At first, it just sounded like the chorus of a loud, angry death metal song, issuing from Cordelia's pocket. But it became abundantly clear when Cordelia reached into said pocket and pulled out a battered, out-of-date Blackberry.

"Excuse me," she said, and in four or five hours Kate had nearly forgotten how utterly chilling her childlike voice was. "I have to take this."

She stood and walked away, leaving behind the lantern but taking with her the knife. For a few seconds, she was out of sight, swallowed by the darkness, leaving nothing but echoing footsteps and death metal music. Then, for a beautiful instant, there was light, flowing from what must have been the door some fifty feet away from Kate. Cordelia's silhouette was solid black against the brightness as she slipped out through the cracked door. Then she closed it behind her and plunged Kate back into darkness.

Cordelia did not go far. She climbed three steps up towards the main house, staying close enough to the basement door that she would be able to hear it if her prisoner tried anything funny. She sat down on the stairs, placing the knife on the unpolished wooden step just next to her, and answered her phone.

"Everything is going smoothly so far," she said softly into the phone.

"Good." The voice on the other end was tinny and distorted, probably male, but she couldn't be sure. She knew next to nothing about the person she was speaking to, but she was almost certain that they were using some sort of software to change their voice; they sounded more like Darth Vader than anything else. "How's she doing?"

"Oh, she's fine. Stubborn, just like you said. Strong." She paused. "She's changed since I knew her. She's different."

"Different how?"

"Just… different. More open, but at the same time… more closed. Does that make any sense?"

"It makes perfect sense."

"She's always been tough, though. That hasn't changed. She won't break easily."

If this had been a movie, there would have been a pause for effect, space for a deep, foreboding single chord of dramatic music. But there wasn't. The person on the other end replied instantly, but had this been a movie, his words and tone were definitely dark enough to warrant a rather long pause.

"Break her anyways."

Miles away, in a different part of New York City, three men were clustered around a single computer, watching video from a security camera on 6th Avenue.

"There's Angela," Ryan said, pointing at the screen; a small teenage girl with wispy blond hair had just settled down at a table just inside the Starbucks, clearly visible through the wide windows. She was facing away from the camera, so her face wasn't visible, but she was easily recognizable by her clothing – skinny jeans, a draped gray top, and a cropped jacket in green denim. However, she also carried a big black shoulder bag, something which they hadn't found with her body.

"And there's the laptop," Esposito added, as Angela placed the shoulder bag on the floor next to her and produced from it a thin silver MacBook Pro. As they watched, she set the computer on the table in front of her, opened up the top, and typed in the password. Instantly, the desktop popped up – a rainforest nature shot, covered with tons of tiny little icons. But instead of opening a Word Document, she pulled up Google Chrome, clicked on an icon on the home screen…

…and began to play Angry Birds.

"That doesn't look like writing," Castle said, rather unnecessarily.

"Nope," Ryan agreed.

"I get going to a coffee shop to write," Castle mused. "But to play Angry Birds?"

"Maybe there's no internet access at her house," Esposito suggested.

Castle contemplated this for a second before shaking his head. "No. Did you see her mother's shoes?"

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "No."

"They're designer heels. Pretty expensive, but not available in stores. You can only get them on the internet."

"And you know this… how?"

"I bought my first wife the same pair when we were dating."

Esposito's expression suddenly mirrored that of his partner exactly. "Dude, how do you remember that?"

"I –" Castle faltered. He tried to make a quick recovery, continue before the boys noticed that he had paused. But Esposito had spoken the dreaded word, _remember, _and that was all it took to bring bad memories and feelings associated with Kate rushing to the front of his mind.

"I remember things." _I'm not the only one. _"Call it a gift."

But he could not allow this to get in the way. No matter what Kate had done to him, no matter how she had wronged him, that could not change the way he felt about her. It could not change the fact that he could not bear the thought of letting her slip away.

It could not change the fact that he would not stop looking until he found her.

"Hey!" Ryan pointed to the screen; Angela had gotten up, leaving her laptop behind on the table. "She's going somewhere."

"She's probably getting coffee," Castle suggested neutrally.

He was right – a few minutes later, Angela returned to her table carrying a cup of coffee and a small brown paper bag. Taking a sip of the coffee, she sat, pushing her computer to the side to make way for the food she had brought. She placed the coffee on the table, reached into the bag, and produced a rather large cinnamon bun. Carefully, she set the paper bag flat on the table and placed the cinnamon bun down on top of it. Pulling off her pinky ring and putting it on the table beside her food, she picked up the bun again and began to eat.

"Hey," Esposito said thoughtfully.

"What?" Ryan and Castle both asked simultaneously.

"She took off her ring."

"Yeah," Ryan said. "And?"

"When I was talking to Angela's parents, her mother asked how we knew the body was her daughter when her face was unrecognizable and her wallet was gone," Esposito explained. "I told her it was the jewelry she was wearing, the ring and the dog tags. She sort of smiled, as though it was obvious, and she said that Angela never took that jewelry off. Not when she slept, not when she showered… not when she ate."

Staring at the girl in the video, Castle could practically see the pieces of the case arranging themselves to form a clear picture. Angela had been shot in the face when they found her… Angela in the video had her back to the camera… the only way they could identify the body was the jewelry… the only way they could identify the girl in the coffee shop was the clothes she was wearing, and those only confirmed that the girl in the video and the body they found were one and the same…

"So either she had a change of heart," Ryan started.

"Or," Castle finished, "that isn't Angela Duchamp."


	8. Chapter 8

"She isn't Angela Duchamp."

Lanie pushed open the door, leading Ryan, Esposito, and Castle inside and towards the table where the girl who was not Angela lay, covered by a sheet.

"Really?" Even though Castle had figured it out for himself, he could not keep the surprise out of his tone.

"How can you tell?" Ryan asked.

"Miss Duchamp was caught shoplifting a few years back," Lanie replied, stopping in front of her table. "She didn't take much, ended up doing community service, but her fingerprints are in the system. So, out of curiosity, I ran this girl's prints."

"And?" Castle urged.

"It's not a match," she said. "This girl's fingerprints are not the same as the ones we have on file for Angela Duchamp."

"If she's not Angela, who is she?" Esposito asked.

"No idea," Lanie replied. "She's a nineteen-year-old girl with blond hair and no criminal record. Her prints aren't in the system."

"Great." Ryan sighed. "So we've gone from having Angela Duchamp to having Jane Doe."

"Where is Angela?" Castle asked suddenly.

Esposito turned to him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if Angela isn't dead, then where is she?"

There was a long pause. Finally, Ryan said, "I'm going to go file a missing persons report," and left.

"Well," Castle said after a few seconds, "there's at least one good thing that'll come from this."

"What?" Esposito asked.

"Mr. and Mrs. Duchamp will be thrilled."

"Detective Esposito?"

The voice was familiar, but out of place; Castle looked up, startled, to see Alexis standing perhaps ten feet away, her orange hair tied back in a ponytail, blue scrubs hanging loosely from her thin frame.

"I brought the DNA tests from the blood found at Detective Beckett's apartment," she said, oblivious to her father's stare. "Thought you'd like to see them."

Esposito nodded. "What've we got?"

"The kidnapper is a woman," Alexis replied, reading off of a clipboard. "Early twenties. She has some Asian ancestry, black hair, and brown eyes. And she's probably short."

Esposito frowned. "How could a small, twenty-something Asian girl overpower Kate?"

Alexis shrugged. "No idea. I'm just telling you what the tests say." She glanced over at Castle, seeming to notice him for the first time. "Hey, Dad." Then she turned and walked back out the way she came.

"I'll be right back," Castle told Esposito and Lanie before running out after Alexis, calling her name. She stopped, looking back at him, and he slowed down as he caught up to her.

"What're you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you were studying."

"I was," Alexis replied. "But we finished up, and then Dr. Parish called, so I decided to come here. I heard about Kate," she added.

"Of course you did."

"It'll be okay," she said. "She'll be fine."

Normally, those words would mean nothing to Castle. But coming from his daughter, they held an air of truth that could not be denied. Coming from Alexis, he believed them.

"Come on," he said. "It's…" He glanced down at his watch; the time read 7:19. "It's late."

Alexis nodded. "Okay."

"Just a second." Castle jogged back down the hallway to where Lanie and Esposito were waiting. "I'm going to take Alexis home," he told them. "I'll come back soon."

"You don't have to," Esposito replied. "We'll keep looking."

"Espo –"

"Call it a night, bro," he insisted. "Be with your daughter."

After a second, Castle nodded. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow."

Two hours later, Castle sat alone in his office. He had cooked spaghetti, Alexis's favorite comfort food, and they had eaten in silence. Normally, this would be a rare occasion, practically worthy of celebration – Martha's presence at the table usually meant nonstop chatter, but Martha was teaching a class that evening. But this silence was not a happy occurrence. It was somber, almost depressing, and Castle was relieved when they both finished eating and he sent Alexis up to her room, retreating to his office to write.

However, what he ended up doing was not so much writing as staring at the laptop screen with a blank expression on his face. He could not find the inspiration nor the will to continue the story of Nikki Heat, not when the life of her fictional counterpart was in such danger. At one point, he heard Martha come into the apartment, but she simply walked up to her room without so much as a 'hello'. As the time neared ten o' clock, he shut down his laptop, not having written so much as a full sentence. For twenty or so minutes he sat, alone, in his office, doing absolutely nothing. Then he stood and walked over to the shelf where he kept the remote, turning on his television. Instantly, the icon with Kate's face on it popped up on the screen. The repurposed storyboard where he kept all of the information he had found on her mother's murder. He didn't open it, though. He simply pulled his chair away from his desk to a place where he could sit and stare up at the screen. And so he sat there, looking up at this poor substitute for Kate Beckett and wishing, wishing, wishing that he had something more than a picture. Wishing that he had the real Kate Beckett there, warm and safe, in his arms.

It was not the first time he had wished this. But he had not wished it so desperately for nearly a year. He had not wished it so desperately since all those days and weeks and months ago, when she lay in a hospital bed with a bullet in her chest and he sat in the lobby with a heart of despair.

"I wish you were here," he told the picture softly. For a second, he felt stupid, talking to a picture on a screen and all. But it felt right. Almost like Kate could hear him, somehow. And he needed to talk to her. If this was the closest he could get, so be it.

"You would like this case," he continued. "It's a weird one. This teenage girl was killed…" And all of a sudden, he was rambling, babbling on and on, reciting all of the details of the case from memory. The jewelry, the coffee shop, the surprise twist, the mysterious disappearance of the girl they thought was the victim. He told her everything. And when he'd finished with that, he told her what they'd learned about her disappearance so far. The dandruff, the blood, the signs of a break-in, the research Ryan had done, the results of the DNA tests.

"…and we don't know where you are, Kate, or who took you, because Ryan couldn't find anyone you put in jail who's been released recently except this one guy who died. He'll be looking for women with Asian ancestry who were teenagers when you arrested them now, but I can't think of anyone like that who we arrested, so it must've been before we started working together… But Kate, I'm so afraid that this is my fault, because even thought I told you to stop looking into your mother's murder, I kept on digging… Maybe they thought it was you investigating, or maybe they took you to send me a message, but it doesn't matter – either way, it would be my fault… I wish you were here, Kate. I don't know if –"

"Dad?"

Castle turned the television off, spinning around in his chair to see Alexis standing in the doorway. She wore shiny, light pink pajamas, and her face held the heavy-lidded look of someone who is completely and utterly exhausted. "Alexis," he greeted. "Hey. What's up?"

"Couldn't sleep," she replied, her tone weary. "Who're you talking to?"

"No one," he said quickly. "Just… myself."

He could tell, just by her expression, that she didn't believe him. "Kate," he admitted.

Alexis nodded. "You miss her."

He nodded. "Yeah. I do." Really, his change from denying his feelings for Kate in front of Alexis and Martha to being honest with them was a weight of his shoulders. Maybe, if he made the same change with Kate herself… would it feel just as relieving?

He couldn't help but wonder.

Alexis left the doorway and walked over to him, sitting down on the armrest of his chair, looping her arm over his shoulders, and leaning her head against his. "You'll find her."

"How can you know that?" he asked.

"Because I know you," she replied instantly. "You won't stop looking until you get her back."

It was true. He knew it was true, and apparently, so did Lanie and Alexis and everyone. Was he really that obvious?

Of course he was. He was Richard Castle; he had practically made it his life's ambition to be ludicrously obvious.

"Come on," Alexis said, standing and taking one of his hands in both of hers and helping him up out of his chair.

"Where're we going?" he asked as she led him out of his office and towards the living room.

"Zombie movies," she replied simply.

"At this hour?" Castle frowned. "Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?"

Alexis laughed lightly. "We both need it. Especially you."

"That's true," he agreed. So he let her drag him to the living room and sit him down on the couch. He let her run into the kitchen and make three bowls of popcorn – with parmesan cheese, of course. He let her pop one of their favorite zombie movies into the DVD player. He let her curl up on the couch just next to him, resting her head against his shoulder and eating popcorn out of the bowl on his lap.

And she let him turn the volume way up, because neither of them really cared what Martha thought of it.


	9. Chapter 9

Castle woke up slumped in his desk chair.

His head was resting on the desk; one of his arms was dangling by his side; and his other hand was still on his laptop keyboard. He had watched two zombie movies with Alexis before she turned off the television and headed up to bed, telling him to do the same. But instead he had returned to his office and continued going through the long list of people Kate had put in jail. Ryan had given him access to the files, but it was slow work that bore very little fruit – he still had nothing to show for the hours he had poured into it. He must've fallen asleep while working at some ungodly hour of the morning, and he was torn between cursing himself for not staying up and continuing to work and cursing himself for not going to sleep earlier so that he could have more energy for this day.

He sat up, blinking repeatedly to bring the world into focus; once the fog had cleared, he could see Alexis through the open door of his office, sitting at the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cereal. She smiled at him, picked something up from beside her, and stood up, walking towards him.

It wasn't until she put what she was holding down on the desk in front of him that he realized what it was. His Richard Castle mug, full of coffee that she must've just brewed, because it was still steaming hot. "Thanks," he muttered blearily, picking it up and taking a sip of the scalding drink. It burned his throat as it went down, but he was grateful for the caffeine – he would need it.

"I told you to go to sleep," she chided him.

Sometimes, Castle would wonder who the parent in this relationship was. "I know."

Then he would remember that it was definitely Alexis.

"Ryan called," she said. "You should head down to the precinct, if you're not too tired."

"I'm not," he replied, forcing himself to stand up and taking another gulp of coffee. "Where's Grams?"

"Teaching a class," Alexis replied.

"You okay here alone?"

"Of course." She smiled. "Go."

Castle moved slowly on his way to the door, due not only to his exhaustion but also to his desire to finish his mug of coffee. Still, he tried to drink it quickly – every second he wasted was another second that Kate was trapped wherever she was, alone, another chance for whoever took her to do her harm. If they hadn't already. But that thought was miserable and painful and awful and he tried his best to banish it from his mind.

When he arrived at the precinct, Ryan was waiting for him. He simply beckoned to him and began to walk away. Castle had to jog to catch up to him; following just behind him, he asked "Any leads on Kate?"

Ryan shook his head. Castle's heart dropped, but he forced himself to keep walking. "Angela?"

Ryan began to shake his head again, but stopped, thought about it for a second, and then shrugged.

"Sort of."

A nod from Ryan, signaling his assent. Then he pushed his way into the lounge. Castle followed him inside, puzzled, but his confusion did not last long; Esposito was standing in the center of the room, staring up at the boxy television. Ryan glanced quickly between the two before turning and leaving the lounge.

"The media's having a field day with our case," Esposito said, a touch of anger in his tone as he pointed at the screen. Castle looked up to see the words **BRUTAL MURDER CONNECTED TO MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE? **glaring down at him. An attractive female reporter with light orange hair pulled back in a ponytail held a microphone up to her lips – she was speaking, but the volume wasn't very high and Castle couldn't make out the words.

"We haven't released the details to the press yet, have we?" he asked.

"No," Esposito replied.

"They still think that the victim's Angela Duchamp?"

"Yeah."

Castle stared intently at the television; as he watched, a simple headshot of Angela Duchamp, not unlike the one currently clipped to their murder board, appeared on the screen next to the reporter's head. She was pretty, Angela was, with high cheekbones, a thin face, pursed lips, and rich blue eyes. Castle still could not hear what the reporter was saying, and he had no wish to – until a second picture popped up on the other side of the screen.

"Turn up the volume," he said suddenly.

Esposito shrugged and grabbed the remote, doing as Castle had asked; the reporter's voice slowly magnified until her words were understandable.

"…coincided almost exactly with the disappearance of one of her closest friends, Charlotte O'Malley. Charlotte's parents have not seen or heard from their daughter since the morning of two days ago, when Charlotte left to spend the day with Angela. Could the disappearance of this girl somehow be related to the death of her friend? We take a –"

"Look," Castle said, pointing up at the screen. "Look at Charlotte."

Esposito shrugged again. "She's a pretty girl."

"And she looks almost exactly like Angela." It wasn't really true. Charlotte's wavy blond hair was the exact same shade as Angela's, but other than that, they didn't look too much alike. Charlotte's face was rounder, her cheeks fuller, her nose smaller, her eyes a light brown. Where Angela was mature, beautiful, and sexy, Charlotte was young, cute, and innocent. But their fake Angela had been shot multiple times in the face, as though her killer had wanted to obliterate her identity. But, like Lanie had said, they'd done a shabby job of it… the girl still had jewelry that identified her… but if the girl wasn't Angela, the jewelry wasn't hers…

Her face destroyed, her features obliterated, left with nothing to show who she was but a necklace and a ring. Almost as though the killer had wanted the police to think that she was Angela…

"You're right," Esposito said thoughtfully, staring up at the picture of Charlotte.

"The best friend of the girl our victim was dressed up as disappears the night of our vic's death? That can't be a coincidence," Castle insisted. "Our Jane Doe is Charlotte O'Malley." He pulled out his phone and opened the Facebook app, tapping into the Search bar and beginning to type.

"What are you doing?" Esposito asked.

"Looking up Charlotte's Facebook profile."

"What if she doesn't have one?"

"She's nineteen. She has one." A profile appeared, and he forced a triumphant grin. "Got it!" He tapped on Photos and began flicking through it, searching for some feature other than those on her face to identify Charlotte as their victim. Height was a no-go – in 80% of her pictures, Charlotte was with Angela, and the two were within an inch of each other's heights. They had nearly identical body types, with tiny waists and long, skinny arms and legs. It wasn't until he reached a picture of the two girls in bikini bathing suits, arm in arm, laughing in front of a foaming sea, without a clue that soon one or both of them would be dead, that he found something.

"There," he said, pointing to the screen. "Charlotte has a tattoo on her left hip. Words, it looks like." He tried to zoom in on that spot in the photo, but the letters were curly and fancy and the photo had clearly been taken with a cell phone – the resolution wasn't that great. "I can't make them out." He exited out of Facebook and looked up at Esposito. "Call Lanie. Tell her to check the victim's left side for tattooed words." Esposito nodded, pulled out his cell phone, and began to dial Lanie's number.

"Hey!" Ryan poked his head into the lounge. "Castle, get out here!"

The words were not the only thing that sent Castle running out of the room after Ryan. The way he said it, the tone of his voice… Castle was nearly convinced that this could only mean one thing.

"Look at this," Ryan said once they'd arrived at his desk, pointing at the screen. A mug shot of a teenage girl was up on the screen. Her hair was black and wavy, falling past her elbows; her eyes were wide and rich chocolate brown, just slightly slanted; and her cheekbones were high and pronounced. Her face screamed of Asian ancestry, and her figure was small and delicate.

"Amelia Trudeau," Ryan said.

"Who'd she kill?" Castle interrupted.

"No one, actually. Beckett got her on harboring a fugitive. Her boyfriend, Lewis Hayes, killed a man who broke into his house. Trudeau admitted to hiding him, knowing full well that he was wanted for murder, but claimed she didn't believe him capable of killing."

"And she got out recently?"

"Very recently. Just a few weeks ago after a five-year sentence. Hayes is still in jail."

Castle nodded. Amelia Trudeau fit the profile the DNA tests had provided. She was put in jail by Kate and recently released. Not only that, but Lewis Hayes' continued imprisonment could give her further reason to hold a grudge. "Do we have an address?"

"Yeah. Her parents helped her buy a small apartment not far from here."

"Alright. Let's go get her."

"Yo!" Esposito stepped out of the lounge, walking towards Ryan and Castle. "Lanie says she'll check the body for that tattoo."

"What tattoo?" Ryan asked, puzzled.

"Long story," Castle put in.

"Anyways," Esposito continued, "what's going on out here?"

"Amelia Trudeau is going on," Ryan replied. "Arrested by Kate for harboring a fugitive, recently got out, and living nearby. Also, black hair, brown eyes, and Asian ancestry."

"Basically, we think we have a lead," Castle added. "You staying here to wait for Lanie to call?"

"Not a chance," Esposito replied immediately. "What's her address?"


	10. Chapter 10

Amelia Trudeau's apartment would've been nice had it not been filled with cops yelling "NYPD!"

Having the door standing up, intact, would've helped, too.

The walls were all painted a rich, dark reddish brown, covered with antique posters for old movies and framed photos of Amelia with various friends and family. Similarly, the lighting was red, flowing from lamps and hanging lights covered by red shades or wrapped inside red glass. Nice wooden bookshelves were crammed with books, and there were an abnormal number of clocks. Basic clocks and cuckoo clocks on the walls, alarm clocks on the shelves, even a single grandfather clock. Castle could imagine that the turn of the hour would be a very noisy time in this home.

In short, it did not look like the home of a twenty-two-year-old woman who had just moved in a few weeks ago after five years of prison.

"Who's funding this girl?" Esposito asked, sounding rather baffled, as the rest of the team of police officers charged through the apartment.

"Her mother runs a law firm," Ryan replied.

"Talk about irony," Castle muttered.

There was a distinctly feminine yell of surprise, and a few seconds later, a girl was yanked into view. Most of the long, wavy hair she'd had in the mug shot had been chopped off, leaving her with a cap of wavy black locks that had been styled to stick out until some of them were practically horizontal. The longest strands were in the back, reaching down past her shoulders and tickling her skin. She wore a dark gray top that plunged downward in the back, black skinny jeans, and heavy, dramatic makeup; her forearms were coated with bracelets; her feet were bare; and she was being dragged into the room by two policemen.

"What the hell?" Amelia exclaimed, her brown eyes darting around the room from one person to the next, as though trying to find out who behind her rough recapture. "What do you guys want?"

"Amelia Trudeau?" Esposito asked, stepping forward.

"Yeah. What's going on?"

"She's not here!" A cop with scruffy brown hair jogged through the doorway.

"What?" Castle demanded. "Are you sure?"

The cop nodded. "We've checked the entire apartment. She's not here."

"Who's not here?" Amelia demanded. "I'm not harboring another fugitive, you know. I just got out of jail and I'm not too eager to go back."

"Amelia," Ryan began. "Do you remember the woman who arrested you and Lewis?"

Amelia's eyes narrowed slightly. "The lady cop, right? Vaguely. She was a B, wasn't she? B, B, B… Beckett. Detective Beckett. Yeah."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"When she threw my butt in jail."

"She's lying," Castle muttered.

"I am not!" Amelia snapped. "Why would I lie?" Suddenly, her face relaxed; her angry expression vanished, her mouth forming a tiny O of comprehension. "She's missing."

"How did you know that?" Esposito asked, not bothering to disguise the accusation in his tone.

"I'm not stupid," Amelia replied. "Your friend here thinks I'm lying when I say I haven't seen the good Detective in five years. Your other friend here just walked in and told you that somebody, a she, isn't here. She's missing and you think I took her." She shook her head slowly. "You're crazy."

"You have motive," Ryan stated.

"What, five years in prison?" Amelia shrugged. "I spent longer than that in detention over the course of my education. I deserved it – I was stupid." Another shrug. "I always was back then when it came to Lewis. But I know better now. Really, I ought to thank her for snapping me back to reality."

Disbelief seemed to radiate from all three men, so it was only natural that Amelia went on the defensive once again. "What? It's true. When you find her, drop me a line. I'll send her a gift basket."

Castle opened his mouth to deliver a withering retort that was sure to put her in her place, but before he could get out a single word, Esposito leaned over to him. "Bro," he muttered softly, so Amelia couldn't hear, by Ryan, standing on his other side, could. "We've got no proof that she took Kate."

"No proof?" Castle replied indignantly. "She fits the DNA profile. As much as she denies it, she's got motive –"

"And that's enough to get us a search warrant, but nothing more."

"The way she's talking –"

"All we can prove that she's guilty of is being a rebellious twenty-something with a bad attitude and no respect for authority," Esposito said. "We can't arrest her for that. We'll put her under surveillance," he added quickly, seeing the look on Castle's face. "If she has any part in this, we'll know."

Castle forced a nod; unable to keep the resentment off his face, he turned and headed back out the now-empty doorway. As he speed-walked down the hallway, pulling off his bulletproof WRITER vest, he could hear Esposito's voice in the room he'd just left…

"My apologies, Miss Trudeau…"

Kate had stopped counting the hours.

In the beginning, she'd scratched a small notch into the wood of the chair with her fingernail every time she'd felt like an hour had passed.

She stopped when she realized that she could no longer count the number of notches by skimming a shaking finger over the once-smooth wood.

Because there were too many notches and her stomach was an empty pit and the silence pressed in on her from all sides and she couldn't close her eyes because the darkness would consume her and she couldn't keep them open because all she could see was gnawing her apart from the inside out…

She couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand another second of staring at her lap so she didn't have to look at Cordelia. She couldn't stand another second of the deadly quiet that loomed there, threatening to swallow more than just sound. She couldn't stand another second of this loneliness, cut off from everything she knew and loved – from her life, from her job, from her friends, from her home, from Castle…

She couldn't stand another second of the way all of these combined factors made her feel…

Weak.

She felt weak.

She hated feeling weak.

More than pain, more than loss, more, even, than the anguish she'd been feeling for weeks now, since Castle showed up at the crime scene with a flight attendant hanging from his arm, she hated feeling weak.

She wasn't weak. She was strong. She was a homicide detective, for crying out loud. So why couldn't she get herself out of this?

She should be able to get herself out of this.

In action movies, there would sometimes be a female character. Not normally the lead – just the smart, sexy federal agent who followed the lead around, using her charm and her gun to get what she wanted and occasionally sleeping with somebody. Kate had always hated those characters. With their sexy smiles and movements as they flirted with the enemy, trying to get him alone so they could 'interrogate' him… they always felt so fake to her. So plastic. More like supermodels than officers of the law.

More like first-class flight attendants.

Kate had looked at those characters and scoffed. She'd told herself that she was better than them, that she was the superior one. That she, at least, was not fake.

But not one of those sexy female federal agents, when tied to a chair, had failed to somehow escape.

They'd create a diversion using their sharp tongue and bedroom eyes, all the while sliding the ring off their finger and using it to – slowly but surely – cut through the rope or duct tape that bound their hands. And then, while their captor's back was turned, they'd free their feet. And then they'd stand, bash the chair into the captor's head, grab their gun from the table, drop an explosive that they pulled from god-knows-where, and run away in slow motion as the room bursts into flames in the background.

They could do it, those sexy little things who were more flight attendant than cop.

So why couldn't Kate?

It seemed like there could be only one reason.

She was weak.

A small noise interrupted her thoughts – not a ringtone this time, but the little boop that plays when you receive a text. As she watched, Cordelia pulled her phone out of her pocket and read the words on the screen.

Kate could not see the words on the screen.

If she could, she may have felt more obliged to push her feelings of weakness aside and focus on escaping.

_They found Trudeau. You're on the clock – remember the primary objective and don't be shy._

**Author's Note: **

**Sorry for the long delay in posting! The end of spring break means that normal life must resume, no matter how much I would love to put it all aside and write fanfiction all day. There won't be any more days when I post more than one chapter – at least not for a while – but I'll try to post more regularly. Hopefully, no more two-week breaks. My life has gotten a bit hectic lately; combine that with a severe case of writer's block and you've got a recipe for extreme procrastination. Don't worry, I've got all sorts of twists planned. I just don't want it to seem like the story is moving too quickly. If you've got any advice, please leave a review – I welcome constructive criticism. **

**Again, sorry for the long break, and I'll work hard to post more chapters on a more regular basis.**

**-Caskett54**


	11. Chapter 11

"What happened?"

"Nothing, really. Esposito put Trudeau under surveillance, but right now, we've got no proof she did anything."

"Oh." Through the phone, Castle could practically see Lanie deflate a bit. "I checked the body for that tattoo Esposito mentioned," she said quickly.

"And?"

"Found it. Fancy black script, says 'so dark the con of man'."

"The Da Vinci Code," Castle said suddenly.

"Huh?"

"So dark the con of man. That's a reference to The Da Vinci Code."

There was a pause. Then, "You're right. I haven't read that book in ages, but you're right."

"So our victim is Charlotte O'Malley."

"I'd say yes. I'll bring in her parents to identify her."

"Alright. I'll tell Espo and Ryan." Castle heard the line go dead; he shoved his phone into his pocket and headed out of the lounge towards Ryan and Esposito's desk, keeping his thoughts off of Kate with a combination of the day's third cup of coffee and contemplations on Charlotte O'Malley's murder. From what he could tell, she was a sweet girl. No criminal record, like her missing friend Angela had. Most of the status updates on her Facebook wall were requests for help on homework from college classmates. And she was a reader – the most edgy thing that he could see she'd ever done was ink a line from her favorite book on her body. People like Angela Duchamp were the ones you expected to end up murdered. People like Charlotte O'Malley were not.

What was someone like Charlotte into that ended up getting her killed?

Who would want to kill someone like Charlotte?

Opus Dei seemed like too extravagant a theory, even for him.

"The victim's Charlotte O'Malley," Castle called to Esposito and Ryan – who were sitting together, hunched over files – as he dropped into his chair. "Lanie's bringing in her parents to ID the body."

Ryan nodded. "We'll talk to them afterwards."

A little under an hour later, Ryan, Esposito, and Castle all sat around a table with Trevor and Eliza O'Malley. Eliza was in tears, her makeup dripping down her cheeks, trying her best to dab up the water with a tissue. Trevor just looked shocked. The conversation ran along the same tracks that it always did; Esposito began by asking if they could think of anyone who might've wanted to hurt Charlotte. In response to this, Eliza O'Malley shook her head passionately. "No," she choked.

"Ex-boyfriends?" Esposito inquired. "Enemies?"

"No," she repeated insistently.

"Lottie didn't have anyone like that in her life," Trevor O'Malley supplemented. "Everyone loved her. She was always willing to help anyone who needed it… even people who didn't deserve her help."

For a split second, his eyes flickered down to one of the files on the tables – not the file on Charlotte, but the file on –

"Angela Duchamp," Ryan said. "You didn't like her?"

"We didn't trust her," Trevor corrected. "She liked to… live on the edge, Angela did. She broke the rules just for the thrill. She was a bad influence on Lottie, but… Lottie, she never really realized it. Wouldn't hear a word against Angie. Don't really understand how they became friends… never met two so different girls."

"Angela and Charlotte went to college nearby, right?" Esposito asked.

Trevor nodded. "The Art Institute. Lottie wanted to go into interior design. Angela wanted to go into fashion design."

"Were they roommates?"

"No. Lottie's roommate was another interior design student. Haley Peters. I think Angela's was named Rachel. Or maybe Rebecca."

Esposito nodded. "Thank you for your help, Mr. O'Malley."

Trevor simply nodded back and stood, taking his wife's hand and helping her up – by this point, she had given up wiping away her tears and had simply buried her face in the tissue. Without a word, the two hurried away.

Castle picked up his coffee and walked after Ryan and Esposito, back towards their desk. Under normal circumstances, the boys would have made fun of him for not saying a word, told him that he was acting nothing like himself. Not today.

Today, it would've been stranger if he was acting like himself.

"We should definitely talk to Haley Peters," Ryan said as all three slid into their respective seats (sitting down next to Ryan and Esposito's desk and finding his own chair there still felt rather odd). "Probably Angela's roommate, too. I'll do some digging, try to figure out what her name is –"

"Excuse me?"

All three men looked up, taking in the sight of the woman who stood a few feet away. She was probably in her early twenties, small and thin, frail to the point at which she looked rather sickly. Her cheekbones were almost unnaturally noticeable, her nose and chin pointed, and her hollow cheeks were dusted with blush. She had the look of someone whose beauty had faded too early in life, for whatever reason; someone who, by means of makeup, was trying her hardest to hold on to that beauty she once possessed. It wasn't that she wasn't good-looking – she was, but in a sharp, cruel, and definitely lessened way that she seemed to be trying to transfigure into a younger, more innocent prettiness from years past. Her eyes were thin and dark brown, and her hair was smooth and black, cut so that it framed her face in a harsh triangle. A black pencil skirt and a silky silver button-up shirt hung loosely on her skinny frame, and she grasped her hands tightly together in front of her.

"Can I help you?" Esposito asked, frowning slightly.

"I hope so," the woman replied fervently – her voice was naturally high and sweet. "My name is Cordelia Evans. I'm here about Detective Beckett."


	12. Chapter 12

"How did you meet Detective Beckett, Miss Evans?"

Sitting in the chair across from Esposito, Ryan, and Castle, Cordelia carefully intertwined her fingers. "It was a while back," she replied. "She arrested my brother, Davis. He murdered his ex-girlfriend, Bethany."

"Weren't you angry with her?" Castle asked, tipping his head to the side slightly.

"Not really," Cordelia said, shrugging. "Davis, he… he was never very nice to me. He scared me. He scared our parents, too, but they loved him, didn't want him to be taken away. So they told me to pretend that I loved him, so no one would take him away. But… I was glad when he was arrested. He was always off, always angry, and when Bethany dumped him… it pushed him over the edge."

Ryan nodded. "You said you had an idea of who might be behind her disappearance?"

"Yeah." Cordelia sighed. "About a year after he was arrested, I went to visit Davis in prison. He wasn't happy to see me, and honestly, I wasn't too thrilled to be reunited with him, either. Our parents went to see him all the time, but I never went again after that. But while I was there, I met this woman.

"Her name was Keera Logan. She was a few years older than me, and she'd developed this weird obsession with Davis. She followed him around everywhere, hung on his every word. And she was completely insane. Davis reckoned that if he told her to throw herself off a cliff, she would do it without hesitation.

"Davis said she was in prison for participating in a homicide, but she hadn't actually killed the person. He said he wouldn't put it past her, though. He said there wasn't a bit of sanity left in her mind, and that she belonged in a mental ward, not a prison. And I believed him.

"Davis had told Keera about Detective Beckett. He hated her, and because he hated her, Keera did, too. She was always ranting, Keera was, ranting on and on and on… she never stopped talking, and almost nothing she said made sense, but it was pretty clear that she wanted to see the cops who arrested her and Davis dead. So when I saw on the news that Detective Beckett had gone missing, I thought of her, because…" She paused, swallowed, and continued. "Because I was on the phone with my parents a few weeks ago, and they said that she wasn't at the prison anymore when they last went to visit Davis, so I thought maybe she'd been released…"

Cordelia sucked in her lips and clamped them together with her teeth, looking at each of the three men in turn with wide eyes. As soon as it was clear that she was finished speaking, Ryan got up and hurried out of the room, and Esposito asked, "Miss Evans, can you describe Keera Logan to us?"

She thought for a second, and then nodded. "A good bit taller than me. Not bad-looking, but her hair is always tangled and she's got this crazy look in her eyes. She's got a really round head, and pale skin, and dark brown hair, and her eyes are slanted – I'm pretty sure she's Korean, but I'm not sure…"

Esposito nodded. "That's all we need. We'll be sure to look into it. Thank you."

"Anything I can do to help," Cordelia told him earnestly, standing and smiling slightly at them before turning and walking away at a brisk pace, her shiny black flats clacking slightly against the floor.

When Castle and Esposito headed back towards the desk, Ryan was already sitting there, staring at the computer screen. "Keera Aubrey Logan," he read. "Twenty-four years old."

"Where is she now?" Esposito asked, walking around to look at the screen.

"Mental institution about half an hour from here."

"If she's in a mental ward, she couldn't have kidnapped Kate."

"Not necessarily." Both of the boys looked up as Castle spoke; he shrugged. "I saw this TV show once where these people were dealing with a girl who'd been murdered the same way three people had been murdered years earlier by a serial killer. They figured out that the girl was killed by the same person who murdered the three other victims – only problem was, the serial killer was in jail. Turns out, the guy had paid off a guard to let him out so he could kill the girl and then let him back in so that it looked like he hadn't committed any of the murders."

"That's TV, Castle," Esposito replied. "This is real life."

"I'm just saying. It's possible."

"Castle's right," Ryan said. "We should talk to this Keera girl."

Esposito nodded. "Alright. I'll drive."

-0-0-0-

Castle wasn't sure what he had been expecting the hospital to look like. In his mind, he'd flashed back and forth between the huge, foreboding building where a team of doctors had pried a bullet from Kate's chest and a simple prison.

He certainly wasn't expecting what looked like a large, manor-like country home surrounded by a tall brick fence, with a large garden lying just behind the iron gate. It looked far too friendly – not at all the kind of place where you'd expect to find criminals. And, indeed, none of the patients he could see in the garden looked like criminals. Two aging men sat at a table, playing chess – they did not seem to understand the game, and kept moving the other's pieces, though neither seemed to mind. A middle-aged woman with lank brown hair lay on her back in the dirt, moving as though making snow angels as she hummed a tune that sounded like it might belong to an ice cream truck. Another woman, redheaded, younger than the snow angel woman, plodded along next to a flowerbed, swaying gently from side to side and occasionally leaning over to pluck a flower that had struck her fancy; a childish grin was etched across her face and every so often she would giggle for no reason at all. And a small boy, probably around ten, sat with his back against a tree, sketching on a pad of paper with a blank expression on his face.

The door was opened by a woman who looked to be in her fifties; she was small, her eyes gray-blue, and her hair light blond and pulled back in a tight ponytail. For a moment she looked apprehensive – when Ryan pulled his badge out and showed it to her, she looked, if anything, even more so. Her eyebrows raised, she stepped out of the way, letting them inside. As Esposito told her who they were there to see, her expression changed from suspicious to irritated.

"You know, you're not the only law-enforcement types to want to see her," she told them as she headed up the stairs, all three of the boys trailing behind her. "Always trying to throw her back in jail. But the court said she's better off somewhere like here, where her illness can be treated, rather than somewhere like prison, where it's just contained. This is her," she added, stopping in front of door and pulling a key from her pocket. "Try not to get her upset," she continued as she pushed it into the doorknob. "She can be violent. There's a guard in the room, but we'd rather she stay calm."

Esposito nodded. "Got it," he replied as the woman pushed the door open. All three men stepped through, and she pulled it closed behind them.

There was very little in the room. A small bookshelf stood empty. A closet held clothes that all looked the same. There was a desk, and a small chair to go with it, and both were bolted to the floor. A pad of paper and a box of charcoal sticks lay on the desk, and the wall behind it was covered with taped-up charcoal drawings that looked like they had been done by a kindergartener. The guard that the blonde woman had mentioned sat in a chair in the corner, looking thoroughly bored. And up against the far wall, there was a bed with light blue sheets, and huddled in those sheets was a woman.

Had Castle not known that she was twenty-four, he would have guessed closer to eighteen. It wasn't that she was small – she was hugging her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees, but Castle could tell she was tall. Long, skinny legs and arms, thin and lean, almost gangly… she was the sort of girl who one might see and glance down at her feet, expecting to see high heels, only to find that she was wearing flats and that the abnormal height you had hoped to explain with stilettos was, in fact, natural. She had a round face that was almost pretty, but there was something simply off about it – her eyes were too wide, and the way her lips parted was creepy, not sexy. She could be beautiful, if she tried, but it was extremely clear that she could not care less. Her hair was dark brown, the kind of curls that knotted together and ended up looking more like a tangled mess than the perfect ringlets that girls who wished for curly hair envisioned. Between the almost sickly paleness of her skin, the shade of her hair, and the slant of her eyes, she was clearly Asian, but despite her height, Castle couldn't see how someone like her could overpower Kate.

She didn't speak. For several awkward seconds, the room was silent. Then Esposito stepped forward, saying, "Keera Logan?"

"Keera Aubrey Logan," she corrected; her voice was high-pitched but rough at the same time, and the effect was rather odd. "Who're you?"

"Detective Esposito, NYPD," he replied. "You mind if I ask you a couple questions?"

"Shoot."

Esposito sucked in a breath. "Miss Logan, do you remember a man named Davis Evans?"

Keera Aubrey Logan pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, tipped her head to the side, drummed her fingers on her knees, froze for a second, and finally replied, "Who?"


	13. Chapter 13

"Shh, Katie. It's alright. I've got you. Shh."

He couldn't be here.

How could he be here?

It wasn't possible.

But his hands – big, warm, soft – one cupping her face, his fingertips on her neck, his thumb lingering on her cheek, and the other tangling itself in her hair… they felt real, so real, so impossibly, beautifully real. And when she forced her eyes open, she could see him, sweet and adorable and there, right there in front of her.

The whispered word did not feel real as it tumbled from her lips.

"Castle?"

"Hey, Katie," he said softly, pulling his hand from her hair and reaching around behind her to untie the ropes that bound her wrists together. "How're you doing?"

"I've been better," she muttered honestly. "And don't call me Katie. Are you really here?"

He'd finished untying her hands; he grasped one of them in one of his, pulling it into view. "See?" he said, squeezing it gently. "Real."

Kate released a breath that she hadn't realized she had been holding; Castle moved on to untying the rope around her midriff. She sat in silence as he tossed that rope aside and untied the ones holding her ankles to the legs of the chair. Only when he looped an arm around her back and was helping her to stand up did she look around the room, and a horrible idea hit her. "Castle, what are you doing here?"

"Finding you," he replied, brushing a strand of hair out of her face with his free hand. Her expression was worried; within a second, his mirrored hers exactly. "Kate?"

"You have to go," she managed to say, staggering away from him. "You have to – if Cordelia – you have to go –"

"Kate, it's alright," he insisted, stepping forward cautiously… but even as he did so, even as she began to relax, he began to transform, his face morphing grotesquely until it wasn't his… it was younger, slimmer… feminine, evil… Cordelia…

"Kate, what's wrong?" the Castle-Cordelia thing said again, and its voice was still Castle's, thick with compassion and concern, but its thin lips curled upward in the grin Kate had come to hate and fear… "Kate, what's the matter?"

"Stay away from me," she stammered, falling backwards into her chair. "Stay – stay away…"

But the Castle-Cordelia thing kept coming… it was drawing closer to her, but when she tried to get up to run away, she found that the ropes that tied her had somehow rematerialized… she was trapped again, and the horrible, mutated thing with the voice she trusted most was advancing… and when it reached her, it held up its pointer finger, which elongated into a horrible claw, and began to drag it down Kate's arm…

She woke up crying out in pain. For a second she was consumed by confusion – then relief set it. She was dreaming. She'd fallen asleep. That was all. After who knows how long – days, she was sure – of struggling to keep her eyes open, she had fallen asleep. There was no horrifying Castle-Cordelia thing. But there was some element of truth in her nightmares, because her upper arm was screaming and dark red blood was dripping onto the floor…

And standing in front of her was a thing almost as terrifying as Castle-Cordelia, grinning at her and holding a bloody knife, but when she giggled her creepy girlish giggle, Kate could not help feel relieved that her voice was not Castle's…

"It hurts, doesn't it, Katie?" she simpered as she leaned towards her, running a thing finger down the long cut she'd made, running from just below Kate's left shoulder to just above her elbow; Kate gritted her teeth, determined not to make a sound, determined not to give Cordelia the sick satisfaction. "Of course, we don't want you to lose too much blood, so I'll have to bandage it up before making another…" She leaned back, pursing her lips, as though surveying the entire scene, trying to get the big picture. "But for now, I think it looks rather nice like that, yes? Makes a statement. And the pool on the floor is far too small, don't you think? We'll have to let it bleed for a bit longer…"

With a final triumphant giggle, she returned to her seat, wiping off the knife with a clean white cloth. Kate surveyed the rest of the room, trying to suppress the simultaneous sparks of fear and hope. On the upside, there was no Castle-Cordelia thing to be seen. On the downside, there was no Castle at all. No knight in less-than-shining armor to slay the dragon and whisk her away from her dark tower prison. Just her, Cordelia, and a bit of agonizing pain.

A text appeared on Cordelia's Blackberry – she glanced down at it, her eyes skimming over the words printed on the screen.

_Good thinking – Logan was an effective scapegoat. She's bought you a little time, but it won't be long until they realize what you're doing._

Smirking in spite of herself, she typed a very short message and hit Send.

_I know._

_Good girl, _came the reply; still smirking, Cordelia pushed the phone deep into her pocket and glanced back at her prisoner. Tied to a chair, duct tape over her mouth, blood running down her arm, forced bravado on her face… Cordelia had never imagined that the incredible Beckett, Kate the Great, could look so helpless, so… pathetic. It was satisfying, so satisfying…

Easiest money she ever made.

-0-0-0-

"Castle?"

The pause that followed seemed to fill the precinct, like a dark, looming cloud of despair and hopelessness and all sorts of morbid things like that.

"Nope. I got nothing."

Ryan and Esposito both visibly deflated; Ryan, who had been holding a marker up to the board, ready to write down whatever came out of Castle's mouth, let his arm drop to his side, looking disappointed.

"Sorry, guys." Castle sighed. "Crazy theories are not something you can summon at will."

Both raised their eyebrows simultaneously; Castle hurried to revise his statement. "Alright. Crazy theories are not always something you can summon at will."

"Come on, bro," Esposito urged. "CIA cover-up. Alien abductions. Zombies."

"I'm sorry! I've got nothing!"

"Evidence found at the crime scene suggests that the perp is female, twenties, Asian, brown or black hair, brown eyes," Ryan recited. "Amelia Trudeau fits that profile, but there's no evidence, and according to her, no motive. Keera Aubrey Logan fits the profile, but again, there's no evidence, probably no opportunity, and again, according to her, no motive. She claims to not even know who Davis Evans is."

"She's psychotic," Castle reasoned. "It's possible she doesn't remember him at all."

"Then there's still no motive," Ryan countered. "If she doesn't remember Davis, she'd have no reason to go after Kate. We're going in circles here."

Castle nodded, running each piece of evidence that Ryan had just rattled off through his head. They were nowhere, nowhere at all… every one of their supposed 'leads' had gotten them no closer to finding Kate than they had been on day one…

Thoroughly discouraged, cursing his writer's imagination for failing him when he needed it most, he pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, willing any powers that be in the universe to send him something, anything, to lead him to her.

But nothing came. And then Ryan tapped his arm and began walking away, gesturing for him to follow. "Gates wants us to talk to Angela and Charlotte's roommates," he explained, as the writer pushed himself up out of his chair and forced himself to follow the two cops, every step labored, every breath an undeserved gift.

"Just keep thinking, bro," Esposito told him. "We'll figure it out. We'll find her. I promise."


	14. Chapter 14

Haley Peters was a small, freckled redhead who was as similar to Charlotte O'Malley in demeanor as she was unlike her in looks. She was almost impossibly short – petite was a good word for her. Her face was rounded, with pink cheeks, low cheekbones, thin lips, a small button nose, and wide, light blue eyes. Her hair was reddish-orange and wildly curly, forced back into a low ponytail; it expanded outward naturally, barely contained by the elastic hair band that held it. She wore light blue skinny jeans, a gray camisole with a bit of lace around the collar, and a white cardigan with three-quarter sleeves that tied in the front. As she pushed the door to her dorm room open wide, allowing entry to the two cops and their writer sidekick, Castle noted that her eyes were not red and puffy from crying; her expression was rather blank, the expression of one struck by, not sadness, but numb shock.

"I can't believe she's actually dead," she said as she settled into a light blue armchair, the three men sitting down on the similarly colored sofa across from her. "I mean, at first they said it was Angela, and I was sad, but mostly for Char. Angela and I weren't really friends. We've only met a few times, and we never really bonded. But Char… she was like my sister. And then I hear on the news that it's her that's dead, and…" She trailed off, finishing somewhat lamely with a noncommittal shrug. "It's all kind of surreal."

"Miss Peters –"

"Haley."

"Haley," Esposito amended. "Can you think of anyone who might've wanted to hurt Charlotte? Anyone who might've had a grudge against her?"

Haley, predictably, shook her head. "No, no one. Char was just this great person. Not everyone loved her, but no one had a problem with her."

Esposito nodded. "What about Angela?"

"What?" Haley frowned. "But – why are you asking me about Angela?"

"We think Charlotte's killer tried to pass Charlotte off as Angela," Ryan told her. "Do you know if she could've possibly been into something that made someone angry enough to kill an innocent girl to make it look like Angela had died?"

"To send a message," Castle supplemented. "A pretty powerful one, all things considered."

Again, Haley shook her head. "No. I'm sorry. I told you, I barely knew Angela."

"What about Charlotte?" Esposito urged. "Has she been acting strangely at all lately?"

Yet another shake. "No. Sorry. I – I know I'm not being very helpful. But…" Once again, she trailed off, looking as though she was trying to figure out how best to phrase what she was about to say. "Can I ask you a question?"

Esposito nodded.

"Alright." Haley sucked in a deep breath, and asked, "Do you know where Angela might be?"

Ryan shook his head. "No. There's a possibility she's dead as well."

"But that doesn't make sense," Haley pointed out. "If Angela were dead, then why kill Char and make it look like she was Angela? Why not just leave the body of the real Angela lying around and leave Char alone?"

-0-0-0-

"Turns out, Angela's roommate's name is neither Rachel nor Rebecca," Ryan told them as they turned down the hallway, heading away from Haley and Charlotte's dorm and towards Angela's. "It is, in fact, Loretta."

"Loretta sounds nothing like Rachel or Rebecca," Castle commented.

"Loretta Hendricks," Ryan finished. "Apparently, she goes by Ret."

"That doesn't sound much like Rachel or Rebecca either," Castle said. "But I can see where they got the R from."

They had reached the dorm in question; Esposito raised his fist and knocked twice on the door. A few seconds passed before it was opened by a college-aged girl who looked rather annoyed to be disturbed. She was tall and supermodel-skinny, with dark skin and black hair cut close to her head, so that the tufts of dark fuzz covered her skull in a tiny, one-inch afro. Her cheekbones were as pronounced as Castle had ever seen; her nose was small but sharp, her eyes thin and dark brown, and her lips full and coated in a thick, sheer gloss. She wore extremely distressed dark jeggings, a dark red tank top, a loose, distressed white shirt with a yin-yang on the front, and a green denim cropped jacket. In one hand, she held a textbook; in the other, a can of Coke Zero. Muffled rock music could be heard playing inside the dorm.

"You boys mind?" she demanded. "Got a test tomorrow and I'm trying to study. So unless it's really important –"

Esposito lifted his badge. "Loretta Hendricks?"

"It's Ret," she replied, stretching a hand out of sight; when she brought it back into view, the Coke Zero had vanished. "You're here about Angela?"

Ryan nodded; Ret nodded back. "Okay. I can spare a few minutes. Come on in." She stepped out of the way, and the three men walked into the room. The basic style was the same as it had been in Haley's room, but the walls were coated with posters and album covers, the lighting was dimmer, and it was a good bit messier. Ret dropped her textbook onto a rather large pile of papers on her desk, tossed a few pillows onto the floor to make room on the couch, and dropped onto the cushions, splayed across the entirety of the sofa. Ryan, Esposito, and Castle were left standing.

"I've seen crime dramas," Ret began. "I know where this is going. First off, I really didn't know Charlotte O'Malley. I knew that she was Angela's friend, but she and me, we didn't hang. She was kind of annoying, you know? The way she was so nice to everybody. It was weird. I don't think she ever said an unkind word in her life, which is just plain unnatural. But I didn't really mind her. She hung with her crowd and I hung with mine, and we were fine with that. Angela was the oddball who lived with one foot in my world and one foot in Charlotte's.

"Next, I wouldn't know if Charlotte had been acting weird. Like I said, we didn't hang. And I wouldn't be able to tell you if Angela was acting off, either, because she always acted off. That chick was paranoid. Always looking over her shoulders, closing the blinds, locking the door like she thought she had a stalker. The only thing that was different about her recently was that she didn't really seem to care. She was always a good student, relatively speaking, but she never displayed any extreme interest in fashion. Some of my friends and me, we'll stay up all night talking about it and watching reruns of Project Runway. Not Angela. Lately, it was like she wasn't even going to pretend like she cared. Fake it 'till you make it – that was Angie's motto, that and 'make it work'. She wasn't sticking to it, though.

"Finally, do I think that Angela could have been into something dangerous, possibly something illegal? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. It wouldn't be the first time. She's not exactly a perfect little princess, is she? She likes to have fun, and she's got a weird definition of the word. And she doesn't really respect authority. Or rules. Or laws, for that matter. So yeah, she might've gotten into something illegal. I wouldn't know, though. Angie's always been good with secrets and lies. If she didn't want people to know about something, they wouldn't know about it. So she might've been up to something. But I wouldn't know."

Looking rather satisfied with herself, Ret stood up, retrieved her Coke Zero from a table next to the door, and returned to the couch. Her gaze flickered from Ryan to Esposito to Castle. "That all you boys needed to know."

"Yeah, that should do it," Ryan replied.

"Great." She gestured flamboyantly to the door. "You can let yourselves out."

-0-0-0-

Day one. Kate turned up missing. They checked out the crime scene. They were pulled away to investigate the Charlotte O'Malley – or, at that time, the Angela Duchamp – case.

Day two. They discovered that Angela was actually Charlotte. They found Amelia Trudeau. They found Keera Aubrey Logan. They ended up no closer to Kate than they had been on day one.

The chances of finding a kidnapped child alive decrease significantly after forty-eight hours. Would that rule apply to kidnapped adults as well?

If so, their forty-eight hours were up.

Castle poured the contents of his glass down his throat and set the glass down on his desk. He had been home nearly three hours now, and still had not done anything remotely productive. He kept checking his phone, as though waiting for something – the impossible, a call from Kate, perhaps – but all he had were several angry texts from Gina, urging him to hurry up and work on Frozen Heat. But he couldn't write. He couldn't spit words out into the universe, directed at Kate's picture, and hope that somehow she heard them. He couldn't watch zombie movies with his daughter.

He certainly couldn't sleep.

So he created a new storyboard, again with Kate's face in the center. But the people around the outside were different this time… Amelia Trudeau… Keera Aubrey Logan… Cordelia and Davis Evans…

He would find her. He had to find her. If he did not find her…

Terrible things would happen if he did not find her.

Nothing would ever be alright again if he did not find her.

He was sure that, if he looked over the evidence enough, if he imitated Kate and sat in front of his makeshift murder board with his coffee held between both hands, if he stared at the faces and the writing on the screen, if he processed everything he knew about her disappearance and allowed his writer's brain to run wild, making connections that would otherwise go unnoticed, he would figure something out. He had done it countless times before – surely, when it mattered most, this tried-and-true process would not fail him. It could not fail him. Nothing would ever be alright again if it failed him.

He could find her.

He would find her.

Nothing but divine intervention could stop him when it came to this.


	15. Chapter 15

"There are too many coincidences!"

Ryan and Esposito looked up from the murder board as Castle charged out of the elevator, speed-walking towards them, something like triumph on his face. "Told you he'd figure something out," Ryan told his partner, standing up. "Castle, what's going on?"

Castle had barely slept; he had spent the majority of the night staring at his murder board, until, at around three in the morning, he had taken a short break. But upon picking up _Lost in a Good Book _by Jasper Fforde, something had dawned on him, and his break had turned out to be far more productive than the hours spent searching for connections.

"I read this book once," he began. "Well, series of books, more than once. That's not the point. Anyways, there's a point in the series where the main character, Thursday Next –"

"That's a weird name," Esposito interjected.

"– is suffering from too many coincidences," Castle finished. "She ends up on a bus with a ton of women who all have the same name. Stuff like that."

Ryan frowned. "Isn't Thursday Next the series about the woman who can transport herself inside books?"

"Yeah."

"That's fantasy, Castle."

"I know," he said. "But it made me think. We've had two suspects now, both of whom fit the profile, both of whom seemed to have motive, but – according to them – did not."

"Yeah," Esposito agreed. "And?"

"If it was just Amelia Trudeau," Castle continued, "I probably wouldn't think anything of it. Two people who fit the profile, both with some relation to Kate, being released from prison at the same time is a coincidence, but not a very big one. But add the fact that Keera Logan was transferred to a mental institution at about the same time – now we're looking at three different people, and that's a pretty big coincidence."

"What are you suggesting, Castle?" Ryan asked.

"When was Keera Logan transferred from the prison to the institution?"

"I don't know, I didn't check," he replied. "But according to Cordelia Evans, pretty recently."

"Check."

Ryan shrugged. "Okay." Walking around Esposito, he took a seat at his desk and turned on his computer monitor. About a minute later, he frowned, and called over, "Keera's been at the institution for almost three years now."

Esposito, who had been watching Ryan while he waited for him to find the information, turned his gaze to Castle. "Bro, how'd you know?"

"Had a hunch," Castle replied. "Now, Keera Logan claimed she had no idea who Davis Evans was."

"She's psychotic," Ryan called from his desk. "She doesn't remember him."

"We're assuming she doesn't remember him," Castle corrected. "Really, what do we have to prove that she does?"

There was a pause. Then Esposito began, "According to Cordelia –"

"According to Cordelia, Keera was just transferred to the institution recently," Castle interrupted. "So either she didn't know, or she deliberately steered us towards someone who she knew had nothing to do with Kate's disappearance."

"So we should talk to her, just in case," Esposito finished. "Ryan, can you get an address?"

"One step ahead of you, bro." Ryan was already barreling past them, pulling on his coat as he hurried towards the elevator. "We can be there in twenty minutes," he called back. "I'm driving."

-0-0-0-

Kate was cut on both of her upper arms now; both gashes were covered by bloodstained white bandages, carefully wrapped on by Cordelia herself. However, her right lower leg bled freely – that wound was recently opened, and her kidnapper had not yet seen fit to patch it up. She could not for the life of her figure out why this psychotic woman insisted on bandaging the wounds she herself inflicted. Did she want to hurt her, but not to kill her? Did she want her to feel pain, but not to die? She obviously craved the sick pleasure of watching the vile red stuff drip from her enemy's veins – but perhaps she knew if she left the wounds open Kate would bleed out and eventually die, and in her mind, that was a fate too good for the woman who allegedly ruined her life. No, she didn't want it to be over so quickly. When she was done having fun and she's finally ready to kill her, she wanted Kate's death to be slow and agonizingly painful.

Yes, that would make sense. But there was still something bothering Kate, something screaming in the distance, desperate to be heard, like alarms going off in the back of her head. Something that cries that all is not as it seems.

Perhaps it's Cordelia's use of the word 'we'. _We don't want you to lose too much blood. We'll have to let it bleed for a bit longer. _It wouldn't normally bother Kate, but in the same monologue in which she used all of these '_we_'s, she consistently referred to herself as 'I'… _I'll have to bandage it up before making another. I think it looks rather nice like that._

Yes, something was definitely off.

The silence of the basement was shattered once again by Cordelia's death metal ringtone; she pulled her Blackberry from her pocket, answered it, and pressed it against her ear. Her voice was practically unrecognizable – kind, caring, the sweet, innocent kind of high-pitched rather than the disturbingly childlike kind that Kate had come to know – as she spoke. "Hi, you've reached Cordelia Evans. Sorry I missed your call, but go ahead and leave a message and I'll get back to you the first chance I get."

Even by the ghastly light of the camping lantern, Kate could see the little bit of color she had leave Cordelia's face. Apparently, whoever was on the phone had seen right through her act, and whatever they were saying worried her. She said nothing to indicate what the person on the phone was saying; she simply would occasionally reply with an "Uh-huh," "Yeah," or "Got it." After a few minutes, she ended with. "Okay, thanks. Bye."

She stood up and sauntered over to Kate, leaning down to get right in her face. "I have to go for a bit, Katie-girl," she simpered (her voice, Kate noted, had returned to what it usually sounded like). Grinning fiendishly, she reached up, pinched the edge of the duct tape on Kate's mouth between two long fingernails, and ripped it from her face, apparently just for the pleasure of watching Kate wince. The pain was, of course, nothing compared to her arms and legs, but there was still the angry stinging that came with pulling off a Band-Aid, multiplied by ten.

"I won't be seeing you," Cordelia told her as she crumpled up the duct tape and dropped it on the ground. She turned and began to walk away, picking up her lantern as she passed it. When she opened the door, the warm, brilliant light spilled in once again, if only for a second; then it was gone, along with the eerie glow cast by the lantern. Kate was left in complete darkness.

Her pain was the only thing keeping her awake, but she doubted it would work for much longer. Her body was screaming at her for staying awake – for the most part – for however many days it had been (Two? Three? Ten?); her eyelids were heavier than they had ever been; even if her arms were not bound, between her weariness and her pain, she doubted she could lift them. She lasted perhaps ten or fifteen minutes before she gave in. She let go. She was in that strange state where you have not quite fallen asleep yet, but you aren't exactly awake, either, teetering precariously on the edge of slumber, when a rather loud noise brought her back to her senses.

A crash.

She knew that crash.

And then the thunder of many footsteps, the cacophony of a whole load of people all yelling at the same time. She was definitely in a basement; the footsteps and yells came from above her. Most of the time, she could not understand what was being said, could not distinguish between male and female voices. But occasionally someone would yell from a room directly above her, and she could make out the words.

What she heard filled her with hope.

"Kitchen's clear!"

"Nobody upstairs."

"Downstairs is empty, too. She's not here."

"Check the basement!"

The footsteps grew closer; she could hear a slight clicking as someone turned the doorknob back and forth. "It's locked," they called, and the voice was distinctly male. There were a few seconds of silence, and then a second crash – identical to the first, but much louder, much closer.

Kate automatically looked away, squinting in an attempt to shield her eyes from the blinding light. She could not see under these conditions, no more than she could see under the blanket of darkness that had up until recently covered the basement. But she could hear just fine, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with her ability to recognize voices.

"Kate!"

It was not the voice she most wanted to hear, but it still sent relief flooding through every inch of her body. She forced herself to look up, confronting the light; her lips formed the first two syllables of his last name, and she was almost shocked to hear sound come out.

"Espo?"

Her voice was weak, rough from disuse and wavering slightly. But it was her voice all the same, and at the sound of it a wide grin began to spread across Esposito's face. "Hey there," he says softly. "How're you doing?"

"Eyes hurt," she managed.

"I can imagine," he replied. "You've been down here three days."

Three days. So that's how long it's been. In the back of her head, she registered another male voice, belonging to a man who stood silhouetted in the doorway, calling up the stairs: "She's down here!"

Ryan.

"Kate, you're hurt." Esposito seemed to have just noticed the bandages on her arm, the bleeding cut on her leg, the pools of blood on the floor.

"Nah, really?" The attempt at sarcastic bravado was weak, to say the least. "I'm fine, Espo. Just get me out of here."

She could tell, just by his expression, that he didn't believe her. Good – it was a rather pathetic excuse for a lie. But with every word she uttered, she gained back a bit of confidence. Like the fact that after days of silence she still had a voice meant that somehow everything would work out fine.

"Alright," he agreed after a few seconds. He moved to the back of the chair and crouched down, beginning to work at the rope that bound her hands together. After a few muttered complaints about Boy Scout knots or something of the like, she felt the pressure on her wrists release; to her amazement and delight, her arms dropped to her sides.

"There you go."

"Ankles," she reminded him.

"Ankles. Right." And then he was back in front of her, tugging at the knots of the ropes that tie her legs to those of the chair. These didn't take as long – maybe they were easier knots, or maybe he was just more experienced at untying them now. He was finished within thirty seconds, and he was holding out an arm to help her up, but she was frozen in her chair because with what vision she had recovered, she could just barely recognize the dark outline that stood in the brightly lit doorway. For a second she thought she was imagining things, seeing what she wants to see, but then he spoke.

"Kate?"

Castle.


	16. Chapter 16

He was there. He was really and truly there. Not a dream this time – _please not a dream this time_ – but real and true and _there. _

He ran towards her (Esposito had the sense to step well out of the way) and dropped to the floor beside her. Breathing him in – tasting his scent on her tongue, basking in the warmth emanating from his body – Kate pushed herself forward to the edge of the chair and let him wrap his arms around her, holding her close to him in a way that suggests that he was terrified that if he let her go for even a second she'd vanish again.

"Castle, you're crushing me," she choked, trying not to let the pain of her arms and legs show on her face. He pulled away, his expression concerned, something close to a blush creeping up his cheeks. And she broke. "C'mere," she murmured, allowing a tiny smile to dance on her lips.

The second embrace was softer, gentler, more cautious. He'd noticed the bandages on her arms, and now instead of holding her like he was afraid she'd slip away, he was holding her like he was afraid she'd shatter if he hugged her too tightly. And her forehead was pressed against his neck, her eyes closed, and the warmth that filled his body was flowing into hers, and she could barely feel the pain anymore.

"You found me," she whispered, softly, so only he could hear.

He nodded, holding her closer to him, blinking repeatedly to push back tears. "Yes," he agreed, his voice just as quiet as hers. "We found you."

"_You _found me." The emphasis she placed on the first word was impossible to miss.

"Yes, Kate," he agreed after a second, moving a hand up from her back and wrapping his fingers in her hair. "I found you."

He found her.

The relief of it was almost too much for him; he wanted to draw back, to take her face in his hands and press his mouth to hers. He wanted to forget that she lied to him, to forget that she didn't feel the same way he did, to forget that by way of her silence she made it clear she would never love him the way he did her. He wanted to restart, to try it all again from the beginning, to make different choices and try to craft a world in which she could feel something more than friendship for him.

He wanted to love her.

But he didn't.

And when he didn't, when he pulled away, she wanted nothing more than for him to wrap her in his arms again.

He looked back towards the doorway, and she followed his gaze to where Esposito stood (she wasn't sure when he had left the room, or where Ryan had gone). "I called an ambulance," Esposito told them. "Should be here any minute."

"Espo, you didn't have to do that." The tiny voice of reason in the back of her mind murmured, _yes, he did. _She chose to ignore it.

"Katherine Beckett," he began; she suppressed a groan. "You are bleeding from about five different places."

"Three!" she protested, but it was rather difficult to act defiant when, upon shifting slightly in her chair, she moved her arm the wrong way and had to bite down hard on her lip to keep from crying out in pain. Both men shot her looks of utmost concern; she glared back at them, giving them both her best quit-looking-at-me-like-I'm-about-to-drop-dead-I-am-totally-fine look, but she could tell neither believed her. So she groaned, dropped her head back, and consented to sit there in silence until Ryan thundered down the stairs, smiled at her, turned to Esposito, and said, "The ambulance is here."

-0-0-0-

Kate fell asleep in the ambulance.

The paramedics carried her out of the house and into the vehicle on a stretcher, which didn't look very comfortable, but Kate's expression suggested that the little luxury of lying down was blissful to her. And barely two minutes after the ambulance set out for the hospital, with Castle, Esposito, and Ryan all sitting inside, her eyes drifted shut and her head lolled to the side.

For a second, Castle looked concerned; he stretched out a hand to touch her, to shake her, to wake her, but Esposito stopped him with a shake of his head. "Let her sleep, bro," he told him. "She's had a rough few days."

Castle nodded his consent, drawing his hand back and letting it rest at his side.

"We all have."

Staring down at her face with an insatiable hunger, a burning need to see her, to drink in her presence, he couldn't help but bask in a sort of relief he'd only felt a few times before in his life. A year ago in the same hospital they were headed for, seeing her, speaking to her for the first time since her shooting. And many years earlier, finally finding a five-year-old Alexis, curled up underneath a rack of coats, after hours of searching…

He was comparing her to his daughter now. He was holding them both to the same standard, caring for both with the same level of love, the level at which he was not sure he would survive the loss of either.

A question sprung, uninvited, into his mind, one of those if-you-had-to-choose-which-one-of-these-horrible-options-would-you-pick questions.

If he could only save one of them, who would he choose?

_Neither, _he decided, _and both. _He would sacrifice himself rather than letting either of them die.

He supposed he'd always known that was the choice he'd make. But thinking about it, actually considering it, somehow cemented it in his mind. _The lives of both of these women meant more to him than his own. _

Of course they did. Between Alexis and Kate… you had ninety percent of his life, right there. In the other ten percent he found room for Martha and Ryan and Esposito and Lanie and, of course, his writing, but all of them paled in comparison to the sheer enormity of Alexis and Kate. Without them, he would be so much less, a ghost, a mere shadow of himself. So much of him was them.

They rode in silence; the only noises were the dull hum of the engine and the patter against the roof of the ambulance as light rain began to fall. As the drops began to hit the vehicle thick and fast, Castle could just discern the soft thumping that came, not from above, but below – Ryan was tapping his foot against the floor in something between impatience and agitation. Esposito and Castle put up with it for perhaps two minutes before Esposito got his partner's attention and drew a finger across his throat. Ryan stopped tapping instantly.

An outside observer unaware of the situation might've thought the three men were headed for a funeral. To most people, the silence that filled the vehicle would seem sad, grim, even morbid. But to the two detectives and the writer engulfed in the energy of the room, the mood was clearly far lighter than the silence indicated. Just because their smiles did not show on their faces did not mean that inside, they were not celebrating. It did not mean that the same joyous words were not running through the minds of all three: _We did it. We found her. She's alive. She's alright. We found her._


	17. Chapter 17

The clothes on her body. A backpack. Two sets of clean clothes. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A hairbrush. An umbrella. Two hundred dollars.

This was all she owned.

The sum of money had originally been closer to four hundred dollars, but she'd spent almost half on her new look. Her think triangle of hair chopped off, her new pixie cut bleached and dyed a light mousy brown. She missed her old, natural black color, but the new style was not intended to be fashionable; it was intended to be different. And to that purpose, it worked well. She looked nothing like herself.

"Miss Evans."

She looked up; a man was striding towards her. He came to a stop a few feet away from her, and they stood together in the thin alley between two abandoned buildings for a few seconds, both scanning the other's face – him, to make sure that she is, in fact, Cordelia Evans, and her, to finally see the face behind the voice on the phone.

He's close to six feet tall, but other than that, he's so average he could be invisible. Brown eyes, dark hair. Jeans and a blue polo shirt. Black laptop bag hanging off his shoulder.

"You're…?" She trailed off, hoping he would give her a name. She uses her normal voice – young, light, the sort of high-pitched that makes people envision a sweet, pretty young woman with a dazzling smile – rather than the disturbing tone she'd taken on when speaking to Kate Beckett.

"The man you've been speaking to over the phone," he replied – clearly, he had no intention of identifying himself. "You are Cordelia Evans?"

"I was Cordelia Evans," she told him. "As I understand it, I'm not anymore."

"That's correct," he agreed. "You delivered the message?"

"I did. They won't be forgetting this any time soon."

"Well done." He pulled the laptop bag off his shoulder and handed it to her. "As promised."

She took it, flipped it open, and peered inside at its contents. In the main pocket, rather than a laptop, there were stacks of cash. She pulled out a wad; all one hundred dollar bills. All in all, easily a million dollars. She checked the other pocket, and smiled. Driver's licenses, passports, credit cards, all forms of identification. She pulled out a few, checking the names and faces. All of the photos were her, complete with new hairdo, but each had a different name. Susanna Grant. Felicia Philips. Andrea Lark. Mila Ranger. Quinn Solace. Nadine Jackson. Christina Wells. Seven different identities, each with their own license, passport, credit card, etcetera. Seven different chances at a new life. She could start again, wherever she wanted, as whoever she wanted.

"Thank you," she said, dropping Quinn Solace's passport back into the bag. "This means a lot to me."

"Don't leave the country immediately," he advised. "The NYPD may have put you on the no-fly list. Get out of the state, but take trains, buses, taxis, anything but planes. Give it at least a few weeks before you fly."

"Noted."

"It was a pleasure doing business with you, Miss…" His turn to trail off. Asking for a name.

"Philips," she provided. "Felicia Philips." A nice name; she may as well start with it.

He nodded. "Miss Philips, then. Good luck." He turned and walked away, leaving her alone in an alley with two sets of clean clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush, an umbrella, seven identities, and one million dollars in a backpack and a laptop bag.

-0-0-0-

"Castle, you're staring."

He jumped; his eyes quickly flitted away from her face, finding other things to gaze at for a second before moving on to something new. It wasn't that he hadn't stared at her before. Watching Kate was one of his favorite pastimes. But whenever she caught him at it, he was invariable consumed by an embarrassed sheepishness, like a little boy caught stealing from the cookie jar. But when he glanced back up at her face, he saw that she didn't appear miffed – on the contrary, she was smiling, as though she found his fascination with her adorable and sweet rather than irritating and immature.

"Sorry," he murmured anyways, dropping his gaze to the floor again.

"You don't have to apologize." For a second, he wasn't sure that he was hearing right. He hadn't been looking at her – he had no way of knowing for sure that those words just came out of her mouth. But it was here voice, he knew it was. So he'd just have to deal with the improbability that Kate Beckett just told him he didn't have to apologize for staring at her.

It wasn't a terrible burden to bear, really.

"Seriously?" He had to ask.

"Seriously," she repeated back to him. "Just help me get out of here and all's forgiven. I hate hospitals."

"You have crutches," he pointed out. It was true, she did; what with her injured leg, they were the only reason she was able to stand.

"Having crutches and using them are two entirely different things," she told him.

She's inviting him to stand close to her, to press the side of his body against the side of hers, to support her as she leans on him. She's asking him to hold her.

What is he waiting for?

He walks around to stand on her right, the side with the injured leg. She handed that side's crutch to him and he swiftly took its place. Her arm was looped over his shoulders; his was wrapped around her back, his fingers brushing gently against her left side. She held the crutch she has left in both hands, putting half of her weight on her uninjured leg and the other half on him. And so they staggered down the hallway towards the exit, moving at a speed that somehow seemed to be both painfully and blissfully slow. Even her uninjured leg felt weak and unstable as she stepped on it; the floor shook and tipped precariously underneath her feet. He was the only solid thing in her world.

A part of her hated having to rely on him like this. It was the part that, over the course of her imprisonment, had been working tediously day and night to rebuild the wall that she and Castle together had been trying so hard to destroy, brick by despicable brick. It was the part that built the wall in the first place, back when it had all the resources of her mind at its disposal. That part screamed for her to push him away, to tell him she'll give her crutches another go, to close herself off the same way she always has.

But it was muffled, drowned out by another voice that was growing stronger by the minute. The part of her that hates every second that she's living a lie and considers every minute not spent with Castle a minute wasted. The part of her that has been on his side from the beginning. The part of her that spoke out against the lying, manipulative, emotionally screwed up dictator of a person that was the other half of her brain. The part of her that fought back, working in the dead of night to unravel a web of solitude she's been weaving for thirteen years. The part of her that was bringing down the wall.

The part of her that was all that was left of who Kate Beckett was before her mother died.

God, it was like she had multiple personality disorder as well as PTSD. She really was messed up.

"Kate?" He's been talking to her. Why didn't she notice he was talking to her? "Are you listening to me?"

"Huh?" The word fell from her lips without permission – more of a filler sound than a word, really. Just a thing people said when they weren't sure what they were supposed to say. There were so many things that she could reply 'huh?' to. 'Are you listening?' for example. Or 'What do you think?' Or 'I lo-

"I said," Castle repeated, "do you feel like coffee?" He paused, looked down as though afraid he had said something wrong. "You – you look tired, is all."

"Oh." Coffee. Of course. "Um... sure. Coffee sounds great."

He nodded, obviously relieved. "Okay. Alright. Good." They'd reached her car; when he led her over to the passenger's side and opens the door for her, she didn't object. She let him help her into the seat, let him close the door for her, let him walk around to the other side and slide into the driver's seat. Because with her arms in such rough shape, she definitely shouldn't be driving.

But over the course of the ride, she began to wonder whether he should be driving either. Every few seconds, he would take his eyes off the road to glance over at her – for, she thought, one of two reasons. Either he was so shaken by her disappearance that he was afraid if he took his eyes off her for even a minute she would vanish again, or her was so relieved that she was here, with him, alive, that he couldn't stop looking at her, drinking her in, making sure that she really was there.

Probably both.

When they reached Starbucks, she stayed in the car; he left her the keys, in case she "wanted to listen to the radio or something," and headed inside to get coffee. He returned within a few minutes, got into the car, and passed her a cup and a bear claw wrapped in a napkin. She took a single bite of the pastry before setting it down on her lap and sipping the steaming coffee. Grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla. As usual.

He knew her so well.

It wasn't, she realized, just coffee. It was symbolic. He could walk into a coffee shop without asking what she wanted and bring her the exact drink she always bought. She, on the other hand… she had no idea how he took his coffee. She couldn't walk into a Starbucks and buy him what he wanted. She had gotten so used to the routine they'd fallen so easily into, in which he was Rick Castle, the bearer of coffee. Over the years, he'd evolved from Rick Castle, the annoying writer tagalong, into Rick Castle, her partner (and possibly more), but the one thing that never changed was that he was the one who brought coffee. It was what he did. It was their thing.

_Slow down, Kate, _she told herself. _Chill out. You don't have a 'thing'. Not with Castle. _But a part of her mind screamed that it wasn't true. That this, the symbolic gift of coffee, was, in fact, a 'thing'.

Or at least it had been. Until the case with the bombing at the Wall Street rally. Something changed during that case – she was sure of it. She just wasn't sure what. Had she said something wrong? Did she screw something up? She had no idea what she'd done to him, but starting then he'd begun pulling away. And the first thing to go, the first part of their partnership to vanish as a result of whatever she'd done, was the coffee.

And it was then that she realized she'd all but forgotten how to get from her apartment to the closest Starbucks.

It was then that she realized how dependent on him she'd become.

She had been leaning on him, she realized, for years. As much as she'd tried to resist it, she'd stopped trying to keep her head above the water on her own. She'd taken the life jacket that the universe had thrown her and she'd held on tight. And she'd bathed in his stability, his optimism, his refusal to let go or to settle for second-best – all the things that made him Castle – because despite all of her own personal strength, it had been so long since she'd had anything so powerful in her life.

She needed him. She needed him far more than either of them had ever realized. She needed him like air, like food, like water, like coffee. She needed his strength and his determination and his upbeat outlook on life and his unconditional love and all the things about him that drew her to him. She needed his crazy conspiracy theories and his unwillingness to bend and his repeated assaults on her with every bit of ammunition for teasing he can find and all the things about him that drove her crazy.

She needed him.


	18. Chapter 18

"So, where to?"

"The Twelfth." Her reply was automatic; she spoke without thinking. But it made sense. Of course, the Twelfth. Where else would she be going?

Castle's expression was instantly concerned. "You're not… going back to work, are you?"

"Now?" He nods; she shook her head. "No. Can you see Gates letting me back in like this?" She gestured to her leg and arms.

"No," he admitted.

"No," she agreed. "I just want to catch up with the boys, see where we are. Then I'll head home."

"Oh. Okay." Something about this statement worried him, but as he couldn't quite figure out what, he pushed it aside. He was probably just paranoid. He had every right to be.

It took them about ten minutes to drive to the 12th precinct. They rode in silence – _strange, _Castle thought, _considering how many things there are to say. _The elevator ride was just as quiet. Kate leaned on one crutch, eating the last of her bear claw and letting the warmth of her coffee cup seep into her fingers. Castle watched her, still unable to completely banish his doubts. Still unable to believe that she was real.

As soon as they stepped out of the elevator, Ryan and Esposito were there. Ryan enveloped Kate in a bear hug that very nearly knocked her off her feet – after a second, he pulled back quickly, red creeping into his cheeks as he helped her to steady herself. Once he was out of the way, Esposito simply smiled at her, giving her a look that said, _we're all really glad you're okay._

And then Lanie was there, looking rather out of place in the precinct, barreling towards the group and babbling incoherently. She seemed to realize that no one could understand what she was saying; blushing slightly, she shut up and wrapped her arms around Kate. Her hug was gentle, more cautious than Ryan's, carefully calculated to the benefit of her injured friend. When she stepped away, she tried for a disapproving glare, and snapped, "Don't you ever scare us like that again!" But she could only hold on to the reproachful expression for a few seconds before she dissolved into near-hysterical laughs. And after a moment, one at a time, the rest of them joined in, until they were all laughing, sounds of pure happiness echoing off the walls and bouncing back towards them, because for the first time in three days, they had something to laugh about.

It took them a few minutes to stop. Naturally, it was Kate who got control of herself first; she cleared her throat to get their attention and said, "So, where are we on Cordelia?"

"Nowhere," Esposito replied, his tone suddenly serious. "We checked her parent's house, old vacation spots, friend's homes. Put a detail on her place, put her on the no-fly list, stuff like that, but there's nothing. She's a freaking ghost."

Kate's heart dropped; forcing herself to remain neutral in expression and demeanor, she asked, "Did you find anything at her place that might indicate where she was headed?"

"Nothing," Ryan said sadly. "Ten thousand dollars in a duffel bag under the bed, though."

"Ten thousand dollars?" That got her attention. "So she was being paid?"

"Or she was paying someone," Castle chimed in. "She could've left it there for someone specific to find it. Besides, if it was her money, why wouldn't she take it with her?"

"She left in a hurry," Kate mused. "Maybe she didn't have time. The way she was talking… she knew she wasn't coming back."

"Which begs another question," Esposito said. "How did she know we were coming?"

"She got a phone call," Kate provided.

"So she has a partner."

"Maybe."

Ryan sighed. "This keeps on getting better. And Gates is badgering us 'cause we're not working hard enough on Charlotte's case."

"Charlotte?"

"Charlotte O'Malley," Castle told her. "Murder victim. Dressed up to look like she was actually a girl named Angela Duchamp, who's currently missing."

"You think whoever killed Charlotte is after Angela?"

"It's possible," Esposito agreed. "Unfortunately, we have no idea where she is."

"Look for her the same way you're looking for Cordelia." When all three men and Lanie gave her blank looks, she elaborated. "Put her picture out."

"Already done," Ryan told her.

"No-fly list," she continued. "Talk to her parents, see if they have any idea where she might go to hide. Friends and family she might stay with, things like that."

For a moment, no one spoke. Finally, Esposito broke the silence, saying, "See? This is why we need you."

She laughed; Ryan told her, "I'll call the Duchamps. You go home, get some rest."

"Thanks, guys," she agreed, nodding. "But I should probably talk to Gates first." The question 'why would you want to do that?' was clear on both partners' faces, but after a second they seemed to decide that she was right, and stepped out of the way so that she could head towards the Captain's office, supporting herself with her crutches, Lanie and Castle both trailing along beside her – she on Kate's left and he on her right – ready to catch her should she begin to topple over.

But she made it to the office just fine on her own. As Castle began to follow her through the door, Lanie stopped him with a tap on his shoulder. He turned, only half paying attention to her. With the other half of his brain, he listened to the conversation in the room behind him – Gates' greeting of "Detective Beckett," and Kate's replied "Sir."

"I should get back to the morgue," Lanie was telling him. "Can you take care of her?"

"Of course," is what he told her.

_Always, _is what he thought.

In Gates' office, he heard the Captain ask Beckett how she was feeling, to which Kate replied, "I've been better."

Lanie nodded. "Thanks. See you."

"See you." He turned around as she walked away, heading into the office as Gates said, "If you're here to ask to return to work –"

"No, sir," Kate interrupted. "The opposite, actually."

"Good. I'm not authorizing your return just yet."

"Yes, sir."

Gates nodded; finally, she seemed to notice Castle, standing near the back of the office behind Beckett. He could practically see the question 'what are you doing here?' forming on her face, but she seemed to decide against it, and looked back to Kate. "Have you thought about where you'll be staying?"

"Staying?" Kate asked, puzzled.

"Cordelia Evans found you once at your apartment already," Gates pointed out. "Until we catch her, it would probably be smart for you to stay with a friend."

A friend. Who? She pursed her lips, considering the options. There was her dad – he would be happy to let her stay with him until Cordelia was found. Lanie, of course – that would make sense. Girlfriends let girlfriends sleep on their couches after being kidnapped until the person who kidnapped them was apprehended. That's just what girlfriends were for. And then there was –

"I've got a spare room."

And then there was that.

"She can stay with me," Castle told Gates.

"Castle," she began, turning to face him. "I really couldn't –"

"Yes, you could," he retorted. "You stayed at my place after your apartment exploded."

"That was different."

"How?"

She couldn't really come up with anything more than 'there were no bombs involved this time', which honestly had nothing to do with anything, so she simply stammered, "Alexis – Martha –"

"They won't mind," Castle assured her. "They love you."

She turned back to Gates, but the Captain just shrugged. "Seems like a legitimate option to me."

Well, now she really had no excuse for saying no.

Castle. Lanie. Her dad.

Castle.

Why was she even fighting this? Did she not want to spend time with Castle?

_No, _she thought, _of course not. _Of course she wanted to spend time with him. He was her partner, her best friend (Lanie was her best girlfriend, and really, there's a significant difference). And so much more, if she'd let him be.

"Alright," she conceded.

He nodded, his expression serious, but she could see a glimmer of a smile in his eyes. He pulled his phone from the pocket, hitting the number 1 on speed-dial. "Mother's home," he said as he lifted it to his ear. "I'll ask her to set up the guest room, and we can pick up some clothes and stuff from your place on the way." He glanced at Gates, making sure this was okay, but as soon as she nodded consent, he left the office, still waiting for Martha to pick up the phone.

"So," Gates said, and Kate looked up to meet her gaze, but she wasn't looking at her; she was watching Castle through the window. "Are you ready for this?"

Watching Castle, Kate realized, but addressing her. "Ready for what?"

"This," Gates repeated, nodding to Castle, and then to her.

Kate's gaze dropped to her shoes; she ducked her head, trying to conceal the red creeping into her cheeks. "I don't know," she replied honestly. "It's… complicated."

"I can see that."

For a moment, both women were silent, until Kate looked up again to meet her Captain's eyes. "You disapprove?" she asked, the 'don't' at the beginning of the sentence heavily implied.

Gates shrugged indifferently. "I'm not particularly fond of Castle. Never have been. He's immature and he's unprofessional. But he's good for you," she admitted. "You're a better cop with him around. I can see that now."

Kate looked away, gazing out the window to where Castle stood, talking on his cell phone. "So… if we…"

"So long as you remain professional in my precinct," Gates interjected, "I have no objection."

Kate nodded, beginning to limp towards the door with the assistance of her crutches. "Thank you, sir."

"Anytime, Detective."

She emerged just as Castle was getting off the phone. "We're good to go," he told her. "Mother's getting the room ready for you. We'll swing by your apartment and you can pack a bag."

Kate nodded, and he supported her as they made their way towards the elevator. He wrapped his arm around her behind her back, and she let hers behind his neck, her fingers grasping tightly at his shoulder. Once they were in the elevator, he expected her to let go, to step away, but she didn't. She stayed huddled close to him, and he didn't try to push her away. Why would he?

After a few seconds, he asked, "So, what was that about?"

"What was what about?"

"You and Gates," he explained. "What were you two talking about?"

"Nothing," she said without missing a beat; his expression told her that she may have answered just a little too quickly. "Just… stuff."

"Stuff?" His tone is skeptical. "Since when do you talk to Captain Gates about 'stuff'? You don't like her."

"I don't not like her," she replied fairly. He looked down at her, his eyebrow raised, and she responded with her patented Death Glare. He, of course, immediately looked away, holding his free hand up in the air in a gesture of surrender. "Fine. I'll drop it."

"You'd better drop it."

"Well, I will."

"Good."

A pause. Then:

"So, are you sure you don't want to –"

"Castle!"

"Sorry."

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**As of 6 AM tomorrow, I will be departing on my summer vacation - to Honduras, no less. While I'm totally psyched, there is a catch. So it is with deepest regret that I inform you that there is no internet access where I'm going, and as such, there will be no new chapters of Damaged Goods posted for at least one, probably two weeks. I'm really sorry about this, but I promise, I'll keep on writing and I'll have plenty of new stuff to post for you guys when I get back. Again, I'm sorry. Please don't kill me.**


	19. Chapter 19

"Hey, do you mind if I sit here?"

Cordelia looked up from the screen of her Kindle – she'd bought it during her short-lived but enjoyable shopping spree, along with a new iPhone, a pair of glasses which looked prescription but weren't, several pairs of colored contacts, and a whole lot of clothes, and had been filling it up with her favorite books whenever she could get on the internet. The woman standing in front of her was tall and skinny, reasonably pretty, with long, tangled orange curls falling almost to her elbows and wide murky brown eyes. She was smiling brightly, a look that made Cordelia think that she was probably a very pleasant person, but not particularly bright.

"Yeah, go ahead," she agreed, picking up her backpack from the seat beside her and moving it to lie on the floor next to her precious laptop bag.

"Thanks," the redhead replied gratefully, collapsing into the seat and exhaling deeply through pursed lips. "I'm Holly," she said after a second. "Who're you?"

"Felicia," Cordelia replied after a second.

"Oh." Holly sighed. "That's a nice name. I mean, I like my name, but it's a little boring, isn't it? Felicia is nice. It's… original."

"Thanks… I guess."

"You're welcome!" And in an instant, her cheerful demeanor was back, along with her blinding smile. For a brief moment, she was blissfully silent; then, she chirped, "Hey, where are you going?"

Cordelia frowned. "Boston," she replied, an implied 'obviously' in her tone. Wasn't that where the bus was headed?

"Oh. That's nice. Me, too," Holly agreed. "I'm visiting my parents. You?"

"My sister," Cordelia improvised. She wouldn't try too hard to perfect Felicia's life story; she suspected Holly would believe whatever she said. "Anita. She goes to college up there."

"Oh. That's nice."

She had to admit, Holly was beginning to irritate her, what with her unwavering happiness and her constant repetition of the words 'oh' and 'nice'. She managed to put up with it, tuning out the woman's constant yammering about this and that – her job, her family, her fiancée, her favorite books – by shoving an iPod headphone in the ear facing away from Holly, listening to the music she's downloaded so far on repeat, and trying to tune out her annoyingly perky voice.

About forty minutes into the bus trip, she was saved when her music cut off and her phone began to ring, the annoying generic ringtone that came with the phone. She'd have to change that.

She excused herself from the one-sided conversation and picked it up, pressing the unfamiliar glass surface of the iPhone – she was so used to her Blackberry – to her ear. "Hello?"

"We need you to come back."

"Excuse me?" she said. "Who is this?"

"You know who this is."

The trouble was, she did. She knew the second she heard the bizarrely altered, unnaturally deep Vader-like voice on the phone. She probably knew the second her phone rang, seeing as no one else knows her new number.

"Of course." She sighed. "What's going on?"

"Something's come up. We need you back here ASAP."

"I'm on a bus," she told him, stressing the last word.

"We're aware of that." Creepy. "Once you've reached Boston, please turn around and come back."

"Come back? Are you kidding me?"

"We don't kid, Miss Evans."

"Phillips," she corrected fiercely. "It's Phillips."

"Of course. My apologies, Miss Phillips."

She sighed. "Is it urgent?"

"Extremely."

"Fine. I'll be there. Where should I meet you?"

"As usual, Felicia, we'll find you." And then the line went dead.

Sighing, she shoved her phone back into her pocket. So many questions were running through her mind. Who was this man on the phone? What did he want? How did he find her? How does he seem to know all the players in her life? What sorts of connections does he have that he can magically produce documentation for seven fake identities? What does Kate Beckett have to do with all of this?

And in the boldest print, running through the very forefront of her brain:

What has she gotten herself into?

-0-0-0-

"Thanks."

"No problem." Castle sat down on the couch beside Kate as she wrapped her pale fingers around the warm mug he'd just handed her. Lifting it to her lips, she took a tentative sip of the steaming brown liquid inside – not coffee, but hot chocolate.

Perfect.

"Alexis is on her way home," he continued.

"Where was she?"

"Spending the afternoon at Paige's."

"She doesn't have to come home for me. She's spending time with a friend."

"Kate, please." He sighed, took a sip of his own hot chocolate. "She's been as worried about you as the rest of us. Honestly, I don't think I could stop her from coming to see you."

She laughed softly, taking another sip of the hot chocolate. "Do you want me to grab the marshmallows?" he offered after a second. "We've got all sorts. Jumbo, mini, colored, colored mini, chocolate –"

"Chocolate marshmallows?" she interrupted.

"Of course," he said; his eyes widened. "You're telling me you've never had a chocolate marshmallow?"

"Never."

"We must remedy this at once," he declared, setting his mug down on the coffee table, standing up, and heading towards the kitchen.

"Thanks," she called after him, "but no thanks. The last thing I need right now is pure sugar."

"Right," he agreed, turning away and heading back towards her, and then stopping. "But you must be hungry."

"Starving," she admitted.

"I can whip something up," he said – a statement, not an offer. "Alexis will help when she gets back."

"Castle."

"What do you feel like – sophisticated and exquisite or comfort food?"

"Castle!"

"What?"

She sighed – how to put this? "You don't have to – to baby me." God, that sounded bad. "I mean, hot chocolate, dinner, all of this… I can do some things for myself." She was messing this up. She was seriously messing this up.

Or not. Because a second later, she heard footsteps, and felt the increased weight push the couch cushions down as he sat down beside her. Right beside her. Without a word, he looped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her towards him, enveloping her in a gentle side hug, his hand dangling off her left shoulder.

A week ago, she would've pushed him away, probably chided him with a disapproving "Focus, Castle." But she wasn't the same person now that she was a week ago. Three days in the dark with Cordelia had changed her, almost as much as her shooting did. She would never be the same. So instead of picking up his arm and lifting it off over her head, instead of inching away into her own space, she let him hold her. She went so far as to lift her left hand and entangle her fingers with his, smiling slightly at the gentle pressure of his thumb brushing against her palm. She went so far as to rest her head against his chest.

And he, taking this as some form of permission, went so far as to run the fingers of his free hand through her hair, softly twirling individual strands, his fingertips brushing against her scalp.

It felt nice. It felt really nice.

A week ago, she might've thought that this appreciation was a problem in and of itself. She might've hated this sweet vulnerability, despised this honest openness.

But today, she savored it.

Because you never know when something could go horribly wrong. You never know which moment could be your last chance to be with the ones you love.

Each second was suddenly precious to her. Because each second could be her last.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she barely caught his murmured words.

"I know you can."

They stayed like that for a while – seconds, minutes, hours, she couldn't tell. It didn't matter.

But eventually, it was he who pulled away, gently slipping his hand from hers and waiting until she sat up on her own to stand. "So, returning to my question –"

"Comfort food," she replied without a second's thought.

"Comfort food it is," he agreed, hurrying back to the kitchen. "Homemade macaroni and cheese, coming right up."

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**I did say 'at least one week, maybe two', didn't I? Well, I am happy to announce that our second vacation destination (see what I did there?) where I will be spending the remainder of this lovely trip has free internet access, so I'm back! I probably won't update quite as often - there's just so much SCUBA diving to be done! - but at least I'm no longer MIA. So that's good.**

**Anyways, I'd say I'm about as glad that I've found a way to reconnect as you guys. I missed you! Also, thanks for all the awesome reviews that I was presented with when I got online again today. You guys rock my stripy socks.**

**-Caskett54**


	20. Chapter 20

Cordelia Evans was rather annoyed.

She'd been told to get out, to take a bus or a train or a taxi and get the hell out of town, to form a new life with the means she'd been given. She'd even formed a plan as she rode on the bus to Boston and tried to ignore that Holly girl. From Boston, she would take another bus up to Maine, and from there, she'd catch a plane to Paris, France. She'd always liked Paris, since she spent a semester there in college, and she was fluent in French, so it seemed perfect. Plus, the food there was far superior to anything she could get in America.

She'd chosen to fly out through Maine because it rhymed with plane. Because honestly, she had no better reason to choose anywhere else. And she liked the way it sounded. Go to Maine, catch a plane. Catch a plane from Maine.

God, she had no life. Literally. She seriously had absolutely no life. Technically speaking, she didn't exist anymore. There was no Cordelia Evans – she had been scrubbed from existence. Though she was still having a ton of trouble thinking of herself as Felicia.

Anyways, she'd had this whole plan. And then out of the blue, the very people who'd told her to skedaddle call her up on her brand-new phone and tell her to get her butt back to the city because there had been some sort of complications. Some sort of emergency.

It had better be some emergency.

Cordelia – no, Felicia – stepped boldly down the steps off the bus and into the station. Even with the new clothes, the new haircut, the makeup she'd piled onto her face to make herself look more like some innocent tourist and less like Cordelia Evans, she still felt recognizable. And as such, she felt vulnerable.

There was nothing she hated more than vulnerability.

She couldn't stop glancing around, looking over her shoulder, expecting to see police running towards her, with Kate Beckett, her personal kidnap victim, heading the charge. Which was stupid. Even if the police did find her, Beckett wouldn't be with them. Cordelia – Felicia – cut her up enough that she was sure she wouldn't be able to return to work at least for a little while. She was sure of that.

Now that she was back in the city, her paranoia was worse than ever. She kept seeing brown hair and expecting Beckett, or black clothes and expecting uniforms. So she shoved her iPod headphones into her ears and tried to tune out the world around her with her loud death metal music, but there was too much screaming and loud noises and it only made it worse. With every shriek, she expected to see people jumping sideways to make way for cops with guns held out in front of them. With every drumbeat, she looked around wildly for the firearm that had discharged. So she yanked out the headphones, turned off the music, and shoved the phone in her pocket.

It was kind of like she had post-traumatic stress disorder. Except there was no trauma involved. Well, maybe there was, but only for Beckett. Cordelia specialized in causing chaos and mayhem, and doing what she does best – creating trauma for others – wasn't likely to be traumatic for_ her. _That didn't even make any sense.

There, she did it again. She kept forgetting she wasn't Cordelia anymore.

_Felicia. Felicia. Felicia._

_I am Felicia. Felicia Phillips. That's me._

_Felicia. Felicia. Felicia._

It wasn't working.

It took a lot to override twenty-four years of using the same name. Maybe she'd have gotten used to it by the time she was forty-eight. God, she hoped it didn't take that long. But she wasn't very hopeful.

She walked through the bus station, her backpack dangling from her shoulders, her laptop bag looped over her head and left arm, her right hand firmly grasping the handle of the large blue suitcase she'd bought to cart around all of her new clothes. And she kept going, and going, and going, dragging her suitcase along behind her and keeping an eye out for NYPD.

It was a rather big bus station. And since she had no idea where she should go to meet up with her contact, she just kept walking the length of it over and over again. They'd promised that they'd find her, but it was almost an hour before anything out of the ordinary happened.

"Cornelia."

Instinctively, she looked up, searching for the source of the voice that had said something so close to her name – her old name, that is. She still responded to it. She really shouldn't, but she did. If a cop were to call out 'Cornelia Evans' right then, she knew she would look up. It was subconscious. She didn't mean to do it, but she did anyways. So if a cop were to call out for her, she'd basically be screwed.

But her gaze landed instead on a tall man with a casual stance and short, scruffy blonde hair in jeans and a t-shirt for a sports team she didn't know. He was rather cute, probably a few years older than her, and decidedly not a cop.

She'd never seen him before in his life.

"Excuse me?" she says, stepping forward. "I – I think you have me confused with someone else."

"Really?" The guy laughed nervously, looking down at his feet – now that she was paying attention, she could hear a hint of a French accent in his voice, but it was very faint. Something about him seemed familiar, too, though she couldn't put her finger on what. "I'm sorry, then. Really. You just look exactly like this girl I used to date. Cornelia was her name. Cornelia… Devin, I think. Yeah, that sounds right."

Cornelia Devin. Cordelia Evans.

It was too close to be a coincidence.

It seemed like maybe it was possible that he'd dated Cordelia a while back and was remember her name wrong. But she was pretty sure she would remember if she'd dated a blond French hottie, and she hadn't.

"Alright, then," she said, feeling slightly awkward and extremely confused. "I'll be going, then… there's someone I have to meet…"

She turned and began to walk away, but after a second, the guy's voice called out to her again, and his words stopped her in her tracks.

"Hey… you aren't Quinn Solace, are you?"

Quinn Solace.

Quinn Solace.

_Quinn Solace._

She was Felicia Phillips. But yes, she was also Quinn Solace. Quinn, another of her seven identities. Quinn, who technically did not exist yet and would not until Cornelia – _Felicia _– chose to change her name and identity once again.

Quinn Solace, a name that this guy could only know if he was a part of the group that hired her.

"Yeah," she said after a second, turning around. "That's me."

"Really? Quinn? No way!" He grinned. "Nah, you know what? I don't believe you. Prove it. Show me some ID."

He was good. Anyone passing by would think they were childhood friends, maybe high school sweethearts, reuniting after years of no contact and not quite believing that the person standing before them was the one that they used to know. No one would suspect anything. So she nodded, and subtly opened her laptop bag, rifling around inside for something belonging to Quinn Solace. What she found first was her driver's license, and she held it up, showing the guy the hard piece of plastic with the unflattering picture of her and the name QUINN L. SOLACE stamped across it in black letter.

She wasn't sure what the L stood for. None of Quinn's other things said. Leslie. She'd go with that. It was a nice name, and 'Quinn Leslie Solace' had a pretty ring to it.

"Quinn!" the guy said, sounding delighted, and as she tucked the driver's license back into the bag and closed it again, he stepped towards her and wrapped her in a hug. It was rather awkward, seeing as she actually didn't know him at all, but she tried to wrap her arms around him, pretending to be his old friend as convincingly as he was pretending to be hers.

With her new mousy-brown pixie cut, there was no hair to mask the man's mouth as he whispered instructions in her ear. Still, he managed to do it so subtly that no one walking past suspected a thing.

"There's a diner a ways down the street called Loretta's," he said. "Go there, and order something. Anything, it doesn't matter. Use Quinn Solace's credit card?"

"And then what?" she whispered back.

"You'll know what to do," he told her. "I'll meet you there. Twenty minutes." And then he pulled away, grinning, falling easily back into the persona of her old friend. "I've got to go," he said. "I've got a meeting – can't be late." He pulled a pen from his back pocket and grabbed her hand, writing something down on her palm and saying, "Here's my number – call me when you get the chance. We can catch up."

"Sure," she agreed, and he stowed the pen away in his pocket again and walked off, waving to her as he disappeared into the crowds.

She waited until he'd been gone for a minute to read what he wrote on her hand.

It wasn't not a phone number. It was words – three simple sentences, written in large, messy scrawl, all capital letters.

YOU ARE QUINN SOLACE

GO WITH THE FLOW

DON'T GET CAUGHT


	21. Chapter 21

"Kate!"

You would think that she was this girl's mother, her older sister, or – at the very least – her best friend. The joy in Alexis's voice was intense enough for a stranger to believe any of the above.

As soon as she came in the door, her eyes landed on Kate, sitting on the back of the couch (she liked it better there than on the part you were actually supposed to sit on, mostly because it felt more like she was standing up on her own), watching Castle pouring a packet of finely powdered bright orange cheese into a black pot. Her shoulder bag slipped from her arm and hit the floor with a thud, but the teenager didn't seem to care at all. Not bothering to take off her coat or shoes, she ran towards Kate at top speed and enveloped her in an insanely tight bear hug that knocked the breath out of the homicide detective. The side of Alexis's head was pressed against Kate's shoulder, and she could practically feel the girl's cheekbones lift slightly as she grinned. The euphoria that emanated from her was so palpable, so tangible, that one got the feeling she had never been happier in her life, which made little sense. Kate's relationship with Alexis had never been particularly close. There had been moments – like the first time she saw her after three months of isolation after her shooting – when the edge of her words and the glances she would shoot her gave the impression that she was angry as hell at Kate. When she'd rescued Castle and Martha from the bank months ago, she thought she'd felt the last of Alexis's resentment slip away, but this… it was like she'd never done anything to hurt this girl's father. It was like she was perfect, an angel brought into the Castles' lives to bring them nothing but happiness.

Very few things were further from the truth.

Still, as Alexis slowly pulled away, still smiling at her, she couldn't help but feel… what? Happy? Not quite. Hopeful? Maybe. Accepted? Yes, there was that, but something more.

Loved. She felt loved.

She honestly couldn't say that she disliked the feeling.

"We were all so worried!" Alexis exclaimed, her blue eyes – so like her father's – wide open. "Where were you? What happened? Are you okay?"

"Alexis, slow down," Castle urged as he leaned across the kitchen to grab a wooden spoon, but Kate gave him a small smile that said 'it's alright'.

"Cordelia Evans," she began. "I arrested her brother a while back, and apparently she wanted revenge."

"Why now?" Alexis asked. "Why'd she wait so long?"

"Search me." Kate shrugged. "Really, I have no clue. I'm not sure how she got into my apartment, either. I just walked out into the living room, and all of a sudden someone was attacking me. I didn't even see her at all – I just remember thinking that she was tiny," one note of cynical laughter, "but she could seriously fight."

"Ryan ran a background check on her," Castle called, dumping a glass measuring cup full of hot water into the pot. "Or something. Anyways, she knows tae kwon do. And jujitsu. And Kempo."

"Kempo," Kate repeated with a sigh. "That explains that, then. Wait. When was this?"

"He called while I was getting coffee."

Kate frowned. "And you didn't mention this until now?"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I had… other things on my mind."

Other things on his mind. Somehow, she couldn't find it in her to scold him for not telling her this. Actually, she almost wanted to grin. But she didn't. She just turned back to Alexis and continued. "Anyways, I woke up in her basement. Really, almost nothing happened while I was there. She mostly just sat there a ways away from me. It was kind of weird. She never did anything. She only left every once in a while to eat something and when her cell phone rang. I never even saw her sleep."

"Weird," Alexis murmured. "Wait. Did she give you anything to eat?"

"Water, every once in a while," Kate replied. "No food."

The teenager's eyes got even wider. "You must be starving!"

"Alexis, relax," Castle called. "I'm making mac and cheese."

"Let me help," Alexis said immediately, hurrying over into the kitchen and peering into the pot. "Dad, you're supposed to put the macaroni in before the cheese."

"Oh. Right."

"Here. Let me." She was standing on his left – wordlessly, she reached across his body and slipped the box of Spiderman-themed macaroni from his right hand. Swiftly, she opened it, dumping all of the little white spider webs and characters into the pot, grabbed the wooden spoon from her father's left hand, and began stirring. As Kate laughed softly, Castle gave her a look that clearly said 'I told you she'd want to help'.

They were so clearly family. Father and daughter. More closely bonded than any other pair. She would always be his little girl. And Kate knew that no matter what she did, Alexis would always come first.

The thought didn't bother her at all.

They were family. Of course Alexis would come first. They were family.

And for the first time, Kate felt like she was really and truly a part of this family.

And that thought made her happier than anything.

-0-0-0-

"Welcome to Loretta's."

The girl behind the counter was young, younger than Cordelia – probably eighteen or nineteen. She had long dark brown hair, almost imperceptibly wavy, tumbling loosely down her back to her elbows. She was rather pretty, with wide, dark eyes, thin, arching eyebrows, a tiny button nose, pursed lips, and a rounded face. Her ears stuck out a bit, though, and her skin was pale and freckled, like she hadn't been out in the sun in years. She wore a black fitted t-shirt; a white pattern that resembled splatter paint was visible on the left sleeve, but most of the shirt was covered by an apron – light, creamy yellow, quilt-like material, with **Loretta's** embroidered across the chest in elegant cursive with light purple thread. A similarly colored baseball cap sat atop the girl's head – it, too, had** Loretta's** written on it in the same style as on the apron.

"You'd be Loretta?" Cordelia asked the girl, out of pure curiosity.

"Loretta's my mother," the girl replied, sounding like the fact irritated her quite a bit. "I'm Rhonda."

"Pretty name."

"Thanks. Can I get you anything?"

Cordelia paused, unsure. She wasn't really hungry – still, the cute British guy had told her to order something and pay with Quinn Solace's credit card. Maybe she'd just get a cookie. Or a smoothie. Something small.

"The special's key lime pie," Rhonda piped up, pointing to the chalkboard where just that was written. "I made it myself."

"Okay. I'll have that, then."

"Alright. That's six dollars."

Cordelia shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out the purple leather wallet she'd bought herself at a store in the bus station for this exact purpose. She'd carefully filled it with everything of Quinn Solace's – driver's license, credit card, etcetera – so that anyone in line behind her would not see her rummaging through a bag full of various identities. That would look a tad bit suspicious.

She slipped the credit card from its pocket and passed it over to Rhonda, who took it, swiped it, and gave it back. Peering at the screen, she read, "Quinn L. Solace."

"Yeah."

"That's a cool name. Cooler than Rhonda Holloway. What's the 'L' stand for?"

"Leslie."

"Ah. That's cool. You want a receipt?"

"Oh, ah – no thanks."

"S'cool." Rhonda hit a button on the keyboard and turned, saying, "I'll be right back with your pie." But as she hurried away, Cordelia heard a voice behind her – a voice that was chillingly familiar, even though she'd only heard it once before.

"Quinn."

She looked over her shoulder, giving what she hoped was a convincing smile as her eyes landed on the British guy. "Hey," she greeted.

"I was a little worried you wouldn't come," he admitted, walking up to join her at the counter.

"Why's that?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Just a hunch, I guess. Apparently I was wrong."

"Apparently."

There was a slight thump, and Cordelia turned back to see Rhonda placing a small paper plate with a slice of key lime pie and a plastic fork on it down on the counter. "There you go," she said; then, when she caught sight of the British guy, her marginally irritated expression morphed into a smile, and then a look of confusion. "Hey, you guys know each other?"

"Old friends," the British guy told her. "How's life, Rhon?"

She shrugged. "Oh, you know college. Too much work, too little time, and any extra seconds you have spent serving pie at your mom's diner to earn a little pocket money. Overall, I guess life's alright." She turned to Cordelia, saying, "Pete comes here all the time. He loves my pie."

"It's incredible."

"You're sweet. Now, please, if you're not going to buy anything, move along. I have paying customers waiting."

"Of course." He began to walk away; Cordelia picked up her pie, said a quick goodbye to Rhonda (who was no longer paying her any attention), and hurried after him.

"Pete," she called as he pushed through the doors, rather grateful to have something to call this man who was supposed to be an old friend. He didn't stop, just looked back over his shoulder and gestured for her to follow him. So she did.

In hindsight, she really shouldn't have.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Okay, so writing this chapter was fun. I managed to work in a few references to my other favorite TV show, Warehouse 13, and I'm very proud of myself for that. Anyone who watches Warehouse and caught the references, shoot me a review and let me know. Anyone who doesn't watch Warehouse and, as such, did not understand the references, review anyways. I love reviews. Reviews are my life.**

**I've gotten a lot of feedback about the fact that there hasn't been much Castle and Beckett of late; at least half of each recent chapter has been Cordelia, and Chapter 20 was all her. Sorry that we haven't been making much progress on the Caskett front. We're not nearly done with Cordelia yet and I've got a lot of stuff I need to get through before the major events of the story will transfer back to our favorite crime-solving duo. In the meantime, stick with me and try to live through Cordelia's constant POVs. I promise it'll be worth it in the end.**


	22. Chapter 22

"Hey."

He noticed. He noticed that she wasn't engaging. He noticed that while Alexis told the story of some crazy thing Paige did, while he laughed at the antics of his daughter's best friend, she chewed slowly and stirred the cheesy liquid left in the bowl absentmindedly and stared blankly into space. Who knows how long ago he noticed. But it was only when Alexis got up and brought two bowls, his and her own, into the kitchen to wash them that he got up, walked over to her side of the dining room table, and sat down beside her.

"Hey," she murmured in return, mindlessly sloshing the dregs of her mac and cheese around in the bowl with her spoon.

He knew her well enough to know that when her eyes got blank, when she stared at a point on the wall and grew silent, she wasn't spacing out. She was thinking.

So he asked, "What're you thinking about?"

She paused, took a deep breath. "Cordelia," she answered honestly.

"Don't think about her," he urged. "You don't have to think about her anymore."

"But I do," she replied sadly. "Because she's still out there."

"The boys have it under control. They'll find her."

"You can't know that."

"I can."

"No, you can't." Kate sighed. "You didn't meet her. You don't know her like I do. She's disturbed, Castle. She's twisted and evil and absolutely insane." Another deep breath. "And she's the kind of person who knows how to hide."

"She can't hide from us." Under the table, he placed a hand on her knee, and she shivered. Even through the thick fabric of the loose sweatpants she wore, his touch felt incredibly, indescribably good. More reassuring, more consoling than any of the words he'd said. By the way he glanced down at his hand and then back up at her, she could tell he was watching for a reaction, waiting for her to push him away, like she always did. But when she didn't, he left his hand there, and continued. "She can't hide from you."

Kate smiled sadly. "See, now you've gone full-circle."

"How's that?"

"First you were telling me I'm not supposed to even think about Cordelia because the boys can handle her. Now you're saying that I'm the only one who can find her."

"I didn't say that."

Kate laughed – lightly, but loud enough that Alexis could hear her over the sound of running water in the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw the teenager glance over at the two of them, but she quickly looked back to the sink without saying a word.

And, propelled by a force that had no name, no necessity, no color or scent or taste, only sweet, soft desire, she did the same thing he'd done so long ago, a year and a half now, when she'd placed her hand on his knee to console him.

She lifted her hand and rested it atop his. She felt his fingers relax and spread, so she could gently hook hers through the gaps between them. Holding his hand there with the force of her need.

"Don't leave again," she heard him mumble, and she smiled. "I didn't do it by choice, Castle."

"I know," he murmured, lifting his fingers and wrapping them over hers, so he's now holding onto her hand rather than her knee. She must say, she likes it better this way. "Just… don't do it again."

She smiled, closed her eyes at the gentle, repetitive brush of his thumb against the side of her pinky finger. A soft, tentative caress, a quiet expression of something words cannot hope to express. Something she knew he felt, something she hoped he knew she felt as well.

"Okay," she said, her voice soft. "I won't."

"Promise."

A chill ran down her spine, completely different than the chill she'd felt when he put his hand on her knee. That shiver had been happy, blissful, reassuring and reassured. This one was agitated, worried, bordering on panic. That one simple word shouldn't have this much of an effect on her. But she'd always had a gift for reading between the lines, for looking and seeing the words that a person is thinking but not saying. The words beneath the words. The subtext, so to speak. And with Castle, it had always been easier than with most.

And she didn't like the unspoken words she was picking up beneath this one.

_Promise. _Meaning he needed to know for sure. Meaning her word alone was not enough.

Meaning he didn't trust her.

Still, she couldn't just stay silent. And she couldn't just tell him what she was thinking about what he was thinking about her. Which was a more complicated sentence than she'd anticipated.

So she did it.

She promised.

"I promise," she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath. "I promise, I won't leave."

"Never again?" he murmured, and she knew he wasn't only thinking of her disappearance. No, he was thinking back further than that. One year further, all the way back to the last time she'd left. The time she'd gone of her own accord and hadn't returned for three months. This was nothing compared to that. This was unintentional. This was done to her. This was only three days. That was deliberate, thought through, a month for every one of these long days. A year later, he hadn't forgotten.

"Never again," she agreed.

She was doomed.

-0-0-0-

After Alexis had finished clearing the dishes, both Castles moved into the living room, saying something about zombie movies and instructing her to come join them if she wanted. But she stayed in the dining room for a while. She thought. She drummed her fingers against the table. After a few minutes, she used her crutches to walk over to the counter where her phone was charging (she and Castle had picked it up from her place on their way here, along with clothes and toiletries and the like for her). The battery was probably close to full by then; she unplugged it and turned it on.

As soon as she did, a ridiculous number of text alerts on her screen seemed to smack her in the place. She scrolled through them, the guilt on her shoulders increasing with everyone – because, of course, they were all from the same person.

_Katie, the boys just called and told me they found you. They say you're in the hospital but you're okay. I tried calling you but you didn't pick up. What happened? Are you alright? _

Then, twenty minutes later:

_Where are you? I tried your cell three more times and you still haven't picked up._

Just two minutes after that:

_Sorry – I called the boys and they said you're not out of the hospital yet. They say you got cut up pretty badly, but you'll be fine. I'm not going to coddle you – I know you'll only hate me for it. But I'm worried. Call me as soon as you get these._

Almost an hour later:

_Okay, the boys said you came to the precinct and then left with that writer of yours. What's going on? Where are you?_

Kate couldn't help but smile slightly when he called Castle 'that writer of yours'; still, as she continued scrolling through the messages, which got progressively shorter and closer together, the grin dropped off her face.

_Katie, I'm worried. You're still not picking up your phone. What's going on?_

_I need to talk to you. Please call me back._

_Katie, are you okay?_

She turned the phone off and shoved it in her pocket before shuffling into the living room. Castle and Alexis were both rather fixated on the movie – she didn't want to disturb them, but she couldn't just leave. Castle would flip. So she came up behind his chair (painfully slowly, thanks to the dumb crutches) and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. To his credit, he didn't jump, just turned his head, his casual smile and bright eyes asking, _what's up, Beckett? _In reply, she gestured for him to follow her.

He did.

They walked back into the kitchen, leaving Alexis with the movie, before he asked, "What's going on?"

"I need to go," she told him.

A whole flood of emotions crossed his face at the same time. Fear, hurt, even a little panic. "Why? What's happening?" Then, in a slightly pained voice, "You promised."

Kate could barely keep herself from rolling her eyes, but at the same time, the feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach grew. She really had signed her life away. "I'm not leaving," she said. "I'll be back soon. But believe it or not, Castle, you're not the only person who missed me while I was gone."

"What are you –" She saw it dawn on him, the expression on his face changing from anxiety to realization to that of someone who wanted to smack himself in the forehead. "Right. Of course. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she told him, already moving towards the door. "I won't be long. I'll see you soon." She slipped her feet into her shoes – but left her jacket there, as it wasn't too cold out and getting it on without falling over because she'd let go of her crutches would be next to impossible – and left without another word. As the door closed behind her, as she headed down the hallway towards the elevator, she took her phone out and pulled up her contacts. She'd reorganized them based on who she called the most. She scrolled past Castle, past Esposito and Ryan, past Lanie, until she found him.

He picked up after the first ring. "Katie?"

"Hey, Dad," she greeted, pushing her hair off her face. "Yeah, it's me."

"What's going on? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said quickly. "My phone was out of battery. I'm sorry."

She can practically hear him relax. "Where are you?"

"I'm staying at Rick's loft. But I'm on my way over. I'll be there soon."


	23. Chapter 23

"You're on crutches," was the first thing Jim Beckett said to his daughter when he opened the door to let her in.

"Yeah," Kate agreed as she began to make her way inside her father's apartment. He held out a hand to help her, but she shook her head, refusing. It wasn't pride; she simply needed to walk on her own, if only to prove to herself that she could. "Noticed that, did you?"

"Don't give me that," he told her as he stepped out of the doorway so she could come in. "What happened?" he demanded once she was inside, closing the door behind her and ushering her towards the couch. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be fine," she assured him, limping over to the couch and collapsing onto it, leaning the crutches against the cushions beside her. "Leg can't bear my weight, is all. It's not that bad." She stretched out her injured leg, displaying for him the pristine white bandages that the doctors had wrapped around the cut after stitching it up. "See? Not even bleeding anymore."

"How much blood did you lose?"

"What, are you a doctor how?"

"Katie," he said sternly. "How much?"

She sighed. "I don't know, Dad. Not much."

"Not much, not much, or Kate Beckett not much?"

"Not much, not much, okay?" She leaned her head back, dropping it backwards until it hit the pillows behind her. "The cuts aren't that deep. She deliberately didn't make them too deep."

"'She'?" he asked.

Head up, expression marginally annoyed. "Are you going to keep asking questions, or do you want me to start from the beginning?"

He sighed as he sat down on the couch next to her. "Start at the beginning, Katie. Tell me what happened."

So she did.

He reacted in all the ways you would expect a father to react. Anger towards Cordelia; pressing her to tell him of all the various ways she was hurt or mistreated; demanding details that she didn't have for him; cursing rather loudly when he heard his daughter's kidnapper wasn't caught. A part of her found it irritating, being treated like she was a teenager again, like she couldn't take care of herself. But another part found it reassuring. This was her father. Her father. Here. With her. Right beside her.

The day before, she hadn't been sure if she would ever see her father again.

Now, here he was, on the couch beside her, acting just as any father ought to.

And it was… comforting. Strangely comforting.

Finally, when she finished recounting her ordeal, he scooted closer to her on the couch and put an arm around her, pulling her close to him like she was twelve again. And in a quiet but strong voice, he asked, "Are you going to be okay, Kate?"

_Are you going to be okay_. Not _are you okay, _because he knew she wasn't. Not yet. No, instead, he asked a much more important question. _Are you going to be okay._

Her mind flashed to what she had to recover from – her time with Cordelia, the torment and fear and anguish she had to endure. Then, to what things were like at the times when she actually was okay – her everyday life, drinking coffee and examining crime scenes and biting her lip as she stared at the murder board; sinking into a tub full of hot water, the surface coated with foamy white bubbles, holding a Richard Castle book high so she could read without getting it wet; laughing with the boys and chatting with Lanie and giving out Looks as Castle wove one of his implausible, far-fetched stories.

That was her life. Her normal, okay life. Could she get back to that place, that state of mind? Could she return to that after what she'd been through?

_Was she going to be okay?_

Unexpectedly, her thoughts turned to her most recent memories. Huddled up in Castle's arms on his couch. Having her breath knocked out of her by the force of a redheaded teenager's hug. Watching her partner attempt to make macaroni and cheese, only to have his daughter correct him and take over the process. Feeling accepted. Feeling loved by this wonderful family.

Her wonderful family?

She inched closer to her father, leaning against him, closing her eyes and breathing in the fact that she was lucky enough to have been reunited with her only remaining family member – by blood, at least.

And she murmured:

"Yeah, I think I am."

-0-0-0-

"What is this about?"

He'd led her back behind Loretta's, to a small alley between the backs of two buildings, so thin there's barely enough room for two people to stand side by side. But she stood alone, her suitcase upright on the ground beside her, the pie she'd purchased at the diner sitting precariously atop it. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her stance proud and defiant, as she stared him down. She wasn't afraid.

It almost made Alan Whitaker, alias Pete McKay, want to laugh.

This Cordelia girl… she was strong. No one could deny that. And it was that strength, that stubbornness, that fearlessness, that refusal to back down, that would be her undoing.

"First you tell me to run," she continued, anger burning in her dark eyes. "To get the hell out of dodge, take anything but a plane and get as far away from the city as possible. But as soon as I do, you call me and tell me to come right back. Not cool."

"We don't care if you think it's 'cool', Miss Evans," he replied, the slight lilt of his British accent – the only true thing about him at the moment – clear in his voice.

"Phillips," she spat angrily. "It's Phillips now."

"Of course," he said smoothly, and then, just to mess with her: "Or is it Solace?"

"You chose Quinn Solace," she replied darkly. "I chose Felicia Phillips. It's Felicia Phillips now. I think, after all this, I ought to have the right to pick my own name."

"Of course," he repeated, the cool tone of his voice unchangingly even. "My apologies."

"Your apologies, my ass," she muttered. "Answer the question. Why am I hear."

"Ah. Yes." He gave her a look he'd perfected years ago – the infuriatingly knowing smile that says 'I know something that you don't'. He really liked the way it made people like Cordelia, people he and his employer used and then threw away, squirm. "See… it's nothing incredibly important, really."

"You said it was an emergency," she accused.

"Did I?" He chuckled lightly, concealed a smile at the death glare she shot him. "No, no emergency. We just have a few loose ends we need to tie up."

He could see her outraged expression, see her lips forming the words 'loose ends', but he didn't care. He didn't care what she thought – really, he never had. She was just a tool, a pawn, an item to be used once and then tossed out once it had served its purpose. And she had served her purpose.

She opened her mouth to protest, but the words never left her lips. Because as she'd been standing there, speechless, digesting his statement and looking properly outraged, another man had been walking soundlessly through the alley, creeping up behind her with a rather heavy-looking wooden baseball bat in his hands. And before she could speak, he swung the bat; it connected with the side of her head with a sickening noise somewhere between a _thud _and a _crunch, _and Alan couldn't help but wince slightly. That had to hurt.

It was a little old-fashioned, true. But it did the trick.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth open in a tiny O of surprise as she crumpled. Alan bent and caught her, easing her down so she wouldn't make a sound when she hit the ground. The man with the bat – Alan thought his name was Trevor, maybe Travis – pulled out a roll of duct tape and quickly but thoroughly bound Cordelia's wrists and ankles before pressing a shorter piece over her mouth (oh, the irony). Passing the bat and the tape to Alan, he scooped her up, carrying her effortlessly, like she weighed nothing. And they walked, two conscious men and one unconscious woman, through the tiny alleys towards the street where a van was waiting for them. A street in a neighborhood where no one would look twice at two men carrying an unconscious girl, if anyone saw them at all.

They left the suitcase containing everything Cordelia Evans, alias Felicia Phillips, alias Quinn Solace, owned sitting in an alley behind a family-owned diner called Loretta's. Abandoned, waiting for some lucky homeless person to come and pick it up. Abandoned with an untouched slice of key lime pie balanced atop it.

-0-0-0-

She got back to Castle's loft around eight. He and Alexis were still sitting with their eyes fixed on the TV, the images shown on the screen casting colorful shadows on their faces. He sat in the center of the couch; his daughter reclined in a cushy chair, her feet propped up on an ottoman, a large red bowl full of popcorn balanced on her lap. They had finished their zombie movie and had seemed to move on to The Incredible Hulk (the good one, with Edward Norton and Liv Tyler). She slid her feet out of her shoes and walked towards them to the sound of screams, gunfire, and smashing; she resisted the urge to duck behind a counter, reminding herself that it was just the television. As the screen came into view, she could see the scene when the Hulk destroys the soda factory. Alexis was too caught up in the action sequence to notice Kate; Castle, on the other hand, saw her almost instantly. His eyes lit up, and he gestured for her to come and watch with them, patting the cushion beside him.

She walked around the back of the couch so she didn't end up walking between Alexis and the television. It was a longer route, which meant more time spent walking on crutches, which wasn't ideal. Still, as she fell backwards onto the cushions and leaned her crutches against the arm of the couch, she knew it was the right decision. Alexis only had to pull herself away from the movie for long enough to wave a cheery hello to Kate and place a single popcorn kernel in her mouth before her eyes were fixed on the screen again.

"How did this happen?" Kate muttered to Castle, just barely loud enough for him to hear her over the loud movie.

"I like the Hulk," he said defensively.

"Not _that_," she replied, gesturing dismissively to the TV. "That." She pointed subtly to Alexis, who was still shoveling popcorn into her mouth. She saw Castle's eyes flick between his daughter and the bowl in her lap, saw his expression become overdramatically thoughtful as he pressed the tip of his pointer finger to his lips. "You're right," he whispered conspiratorially. "We must remedy this situation at once." Again, he pressed a finger to his lips, this time in a 'shh' gesture rather than in contemplation. Silently (his idea of silently, at any rate), he crept over to his daughter, stealthily reached towards her – and, quick as thought, snatched the bowl of popcorn from her lap and ran back over to Kate.

"Hey!" Alexis objected, getting up and following him as he quickly sat down. She reached for the bowl; he held it away from her, hugging it close to him.

"Give it back," she instructed.

"You didn't have to steal it," Kate reprimanded.

"But I did," Castle replied. "And I'm not giving it back."

"How old are you?" she demanded.

"Whose side are you on?" he shot back.

For a few seconds, Alexis continued trying to take the bowl back, and her father continued to thwart her efforts. Eventually, she stepped away, huffed a "Fine, then!" and hurried back to the kitchen to make another bowl of popcorn, calling back, "If I miss anything important, it's your fault!"

Her words were scolding, but Kate could tell she wasn't serious, because all three of them were laughing. Alexis was laughing as she put the flat bag of movie theater style buttered popcorn in the microwave and set the timer. Castle was laughing as he called after her, telling her she'd only seen this movie ten times before. And Kate was laughing as she listened to the two of them – father and daughter, closer than close.

Family. This was what family was like.

It was something she hadn't experienced since she was nineteen.

This was what family was supposed to be like. This was what Alexis and Castle had every day, what Kate should've had – what she did have, in better times – but was cruelly denied. This was sweet, easy, funny, beautiful. It was family.

And she loved it.


	24. Chapter 24

"Miss Evans."

Evans. That was her name, wasn't it? Cordelia Evans. No, wait. Felicia Phillips. She'd changed it, hadn't she? Felicia now. Wait – Quinn Solace?

"Miss Evans."

There it was again. She was awake enough now to realize that the voice was male, to recognize the subtle lilt of a fading British accent. Who was this guy, though? Where was she? Why couldn't she see anything.

Oh. Her eyes were closed. Duh.

She opened them, but still, there was nothing. Either the room was completely dark, or she'd gone blind.

_Flash. _Okay, if she wasn't blind before, she surely was now. A blinding white light had just gone off in her face; it stayed on long enough for her to flinch away, blinking repeatedly, before it shut off again and letting the darkness return.

"Good," came the voice from the darkness. "You're awake. Let's get started, shall we?"

Get started with what, she wanted to ask. But she couldn't. She tried, but the only sound she managed to create was a muffled 'mmph'. Why?

Oh. There was duct tape on her mouth.

Hadn't she done that to someone recently? Put duct tape on their mouth? Yes. Yes, she had. Beckett was her name. Detective Beckett. Her first name was something that started with a C or a K… Cameron? Caitlyn? No – Katherine. That was it. Kate Beckett. Katherine.

She'd kidnapped her – she remembered now. Snuck into her apartment, knocked her out, and taken her back to her own house. She remembered glancing back at the bound figure of the woman who'd brought so much grief and misery into her life, lying, helpless and pathetic, across the backseat of her car. She remembered an overwhelming sense of triumph, of pride, of victory. Finally, she was getting the vengeance she wanted.

But that wasn't the only reason she'd done it, was it? No. She'd been… contacted by someone. A voice on the phone, distorted so much that it sounded like Darth Vader. Making her an offer. A deal. She kidnaps Kate Beckett; injures her, but doesn't kill her. In return, they warn her when the police have found her in time for her to get out, and she gets a huge lump sum of cash and seven chances at a new life. It seemed perfect. She didn't think she'd ever wondered how these people could afford to pay her that much money, or how they got their hands on such perfect forged passports and driver's licenses and such for seven different identities, or why they were willing to pay so much money to put a few scars on this woman. Now, she wondered why she didn't question it.

Because she remembered the British man. She remembered meeting up with him behind Loretta's. And she remembered a splitting pain reverberating through her skull, making the world go black.

She remembered what he'd said to her before someone knocked her out from behind.

"_We just have a few loose ends we need to tie up."_

Loose ends.

He hadn't been talking about her helping them tie up loose ends.

He had been talking about her. She was the loose end that they needed to take care of.

The loose end that they needed to tie up.

It almost made her want to laugh, because, in addition to the duct tape on her mouth, the dreadful sticky stuff had been wrapped around her arms and legs. Her wrists were bound tightly together behind the chair she was seated in; when she tried to move them, she discovered they were also taped to the chair itself. Her ankles were similarly restrained, although she found that her legs were simply tucked underneath the chair – they had not tied her to the legs of the chair, like she had with Beckett. Whoever 'they' were.

The light came on again, and she recoiled, squeezing her eyes shut to protect against the glare. And in the self-induced blackness punctuated by the red of the light shining through her eyelids, she felt the duct tape ripped harshly from her mouth.

"Who are you?" she demanded, wishing the man holding the flashlight – because that sort of a concentrated beacon of light could not have come from anything else – would lift or lower it, so she could stop squinting and see him.

"That doesn't concern you," he replied, his voice echoing out of the odd mesh of light in her face and darkness draped over his.

"What am I doing here?" she tried. "And don't tell me that doesn't concern me either, because I'm pretty damn sure that it does."

"I told you already," he said. "We have a few loose ends to tie up. Well, one loose end, really. Namely, you."

She knew it.

"My employer believes that you could pose a serious security threat," the man told her. "I happen to agree. So here we are."

"You're going to kill me," she said; her tone sounded as though she were just now coming to understand this, but as she spoke, she realized she'd known for a while now.

"Possibly," the man replied smoothly.

"Then why don't you?" she demanded. "Why not just get it over with right now?"

Okay, possibly not the best survival technique, but she was desperate.

"Can't do that," he said. "Not if there's the slightest possibility it could be traced back to us. That's unacceptable."

He promptly clammed up again, and before Cordelia could really decipher the meaning of his words, an annoyingly generic ringtone sounded through the room.

Through her barely-open eyes, she saw a flash of his face by the light of his cell phone as he pulled it out of his pocket – quite good-looking, really, and definitely the same British man she'd met at Loretta's. Pete, he'd called himself. Admittedly, it probably wasn't his real name. By taking that deal, she'd fallen into a world of lies, suspicion, and false identities, and there was no way for her to break free.

"Hello?" he said pleasantly into the phone as he answered it, but as he heard the voice on the other end, she could practically feel all of the false politeness drop away. He switched off the bright flashlight and, judging by the sound of footsteps, walked away from her; she could hear a growl in his voice as he muttered, "Now is not the time, Maddox."

A pause in which this 'Maddox' person – probably another fake name – responds, and then, "Yes, I'm aware of that."

Another pause.

"No, she's not."

Pause.

"Yes, I did. Are you calling to interrogate me, or is there a reason for this? I'm busy."

Pause.

"I know, Maddox. They won't find anything."

Pause.

"Yes, I'm sure. Anything else?"

Pause.

"We know. Tell me, have you managed to do anything even remotely productive in the past year?"

Pause.

"Yes, of course I remember. You did a pretty good job at traumatizing her, but obviously, she isn't dead."

Pause.

"I know he's not happy. He'll be even less happy if I don't finish this the way I'm supposed to."

Pause.

"Trust me. The way we've planned this out, they'll never trace it back to us. I'll make sure of it."

Pause.

"Like I said, Maddox. They won't find anything. Besides, they'll have their hands full, especially once they find her body."

A soft beep as the man, Pete or whatever his name really is, hung up.

Cordelia had a bad feeling that she knew who the 'she' the last sentence was referring to was.


	25. Chapter 25

Two weeks.

They passed so quickly.

Kate spent most of her time the first week stretched out on the couch watching television (mostly reruns of Temptation Lane, Castle noticed). And Castle spent most of his time on the couch right next to her, because, being a writer, he could move his entire base of operations by simply taking his laptop out of his office and setting it on his lap. Alexis worked through her final days of senior year. The boys were at his place almost every other day. Lanie visited often, too – when this happened, she and Kate would often banish him to his office so he wouldn't bother them (despite the fact that it was his home, they were completely in control). Jim Beckett came over for dinner every once in a while.

On the third day, Ryan and Esposito arrived at the loft around noon, triumphantly announcing that they'd found Charlotte O'Malley's killer.

"What?" Castle set his laptop down on the coffee table and got up to meet them; Kate tried to do the same, struggling to push herself up, but he held out a hand to her and she relaxed.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"Angela Duchamp herself," Ryan declared proudly.

Kate frowned. "The girl Charlotte O'Malley was dressed up to look like?"

"The very same."

"So – what?" Castle asked. "Angela killed her and then gave her the jewelry to make it look like she was the victim?"

"Not exactly," Esposito replied. "Charlotte deliberately got the jewelry from Angela and put it on. That's why she had it in the footage from the Starbucks – she was already pretending to be Angela."

"Why?"

"What," Kate asked cynically, "no crazy theories?"

"I've got plenty of crazy theories. I want to hear the real story."

There was a pause as Ryan and Esposito stood there, not speaking, drawing out the silence to create a sort of dramatic effect. Naturally, it was Ryan who broke first under Kate's impatient gaze.

"It was a jewel heist," he blurted.

Another few seconds of silence before Kate replied, "A what?"

"I had quite a few theories," Castle murmured, "but that did not make the list."

"A jewel heist," Ryan repeated. "Angela and Charlotte were working together to rob a jewelry store."

"Remember Angela's annoying roommate, Ret?" Esposito asked Castle. "She was in on it, too."

"Knew there was something off about her," Castle mused. "How'd you guys figure this out?"

"Guy from Robbery helped out," Ryan replied. "He and his partner were working on a burglary at a jewelry store. Turned out, the thief wasn't as careful as she meant to be. There were no fingerprints anywhere on the cases or doorknobs or places where you normally find prints."

"But she did drop a charm bracelet on her way out," Esposito supplemented. "And guess whose print they found on it?"

"Angela Duchamp's," Castle breathed.

"Bingo," Ryan agreed.

"Angela was the one pulling off the actual theft," Esposito said. "Charlotte was the alibi – she dressed up to make it look like she was Angela and deliberately went someplace where she was in full view of a security camera. Ret was tech support – she shut down all the security cameras so Angela could get in and out without being seen."

"Good plan, really," Ryan added. "Except for the fact that Angela got worried that her friend's good nature would get the better of her and killed her to shut her up."

"She got rid of the only person who might've told on them, and, by making it look like the victim was actually Angela herself, she made it so no one could suspect her for either crime. No one was looking for her."

"Nice." Castle nodded approvingly. "Angela told you all this?"

"Yeah," Ryan replied. "Found her hiding out in her parent's house in the Hamptons along with most of the jewelry that was stolen."

"As soon as we got her in the interrogation room, she talked," Esposito said. "Full confession, including everything about Ret's participation. Found the rest of the jewelry in her dorm room, arrested them both."

"Nice job," Kate said appreciatively, and the boys bumped fists; she cleared her throat, asking, "Um, anything new on..." She trailed off, leaving the rest of her question unspoken, but everyone could tell where she was going.

"Nothing," Esposito replied. "It's like she's hiding out in the woods somewhere. She's not using her credit cards, her cell phone, nothing. She's probably not even using her own face anymore. She's completely off the grid."

"How could she manage that?" Kate mused, dropping her eyes to her lap and placing the tip of her thumb between her teeth and biting down, the side of her pointer finger brushing against her upper lip. "She's on the run. She didn't bring any clothes expect what she was wearing – that's money. She needs to eat – that's money." She shook her head. "If she's not using her back account, where's that money coming from?"

"Cash," Ryan suggested, but Kate just shook her head again. "No. She had ten grand in a duffel bag under her bed – if she was using cash, she would've brought that."

She sighed, dropping her hand to her side. "It doesn't make sense. None of it. There's something else going on here."

"Okay," Esposito said. "You got any theories as to what?"

Once again, she shook her head. "I have no idea," she replied sadly. "It just… doesn't add up." She looked up, her wide eyes meeting Ryan's, then flicking over to Esposito's. "We have to find her."

"Beckett, we're doing our best," Ryan told her.

"Did you put out her picture?"

"'Course," Esposito replied. "But if she's got any sense at all, the first thing she would've done after running is completely change her look. Makeup, new hairstyle, maybe even a new hair color."

"Money," Kate pointed out. "That's money. All of this takes money, more money than she should have access to." Another shake of her head. "It's coming from somewhere. We need to figure out where."

"Probably the same place that the ten G under her bed came from," Esposito reasoned.

"Right," Kate agreed. "You checked the bag for prints?"

"Yeah. It's clean."

"Damn," she swore softly. "This is more than it seems. This is more than just – just Cordelia." The name felt rough and harsh, sharp and out-of-place, grating against the flesh inside her mouth and throat, making it raw and sore. "She's got friends, allies, funding, whatever you want to call it. Someone's helping her."

"You can't know that," Castle murmured. His first contribution to the conversation, and it's barely audible. It was almost like the voice he used when he knew something he shouldn't, when he was keeping something from her, but not quite. Maybe she was just imagining it. Whatever it was, it worried her.

"Yes," she told him, "I can." She turned back to Ryan and Esposito. "She's psychotic, but she's smart. She'll probably know she can't fly, so don't bother looking at airports. Check out nearby train stations, bus terminals, taxi services, any other way she could've possibly gotten out of town."

"Got it," Ryan agreed; Esposito, on the other hand, replied with, "And what if we don't find anything?"

"Then you check airports," she instructed. "If she's changed her appearance drastically enough and she's operating under a false identity, it's possible that she could've gotten past security without being recognized." She paused. "Maybe. If the other means of transportation don't turn anything up, it's worth a shot."

"And then what?" Ryan asked. "If she's managed to get on a plane. She could be on the other side of the country by now. She could be halfway around the world. Then what?"

"Then at least we'll have something," Kate said passionately. "We've got nothing right now."

"Beckett –"

"Ryan," she interrupted, and the strain in her voice stopped him in his tracks. "Just find her."

He paused, then nodded. "Yeah."

-0-0-0-

Two weeks

They passed so quickly.

Beckett's suggestion, that they should check vacation spots and other family residences, led Ryan and Esposito straight to where Angela Duchamp was hiding, trying to stay under the radar at her family's Hamptons beach house as she looked for ways to pawn off the jewelry she'd stolen. Predictably, she ran when she saw them. It didn't take them long to catch a panicked teenage girl (in high-heeled flip-flops, no less!), and as soon as they got her back to the precinct and started questioning her, her entire plan unraveled. She spun a story for them worthy of Richard Castle, a story of deceit and bribery and rivalry and greed, the story of one girl who wanted to run away and two friends who helped her to do it. Angela, preppy schoolgirl gone wrong, hadn't wanted the life her parents had planned out for her. She'd been planning to run away for months, but had encountered one significant problem: she didn't have the money. So she hatched a plan – she would steal it. Robbing a bank was too high-profile. No, a jewelry store would do just fine. She brought Ret, her tough-as-nails roommate, in on the plan. Ret was the sort who lived on the edge; she'd broken the law plenty of times before, computer crimes mostly, but had never been caught. So they planned it all out together. Ret would hack the security camera feeds, action-movie-style, and Angela would get in and out without being seen. Still, she wanted one thing the plan didn't give her. She wanted an airtight alibi.

And conveniently, she had a friend who, aside from her face, looked virtually identical to Angela.

So they brought Charlotte in on the plan. She was reluctant at first, but through a combination of reasoning, begging, threats, and bribery, they eventually convinced her to help. It'll be easy, they said. Just stay in sight of a security camera, any security camera, and make it look like you're Angela. They'll never connect you to the crime. It'll be a cinch.

The theft went off without a hitch – except that Angela wasn't careful as she thought she was, and she didn't noticed she'd left behind a charm bracelet with her prints on it. And as she made her way to the established rendezvous point with Charlotte and Ret – the Empire State Building – she had doubts. She worried that Charlotte, sweet girl that she was, would feel guilty for participating in a robbery and would go to the cops. So instead of taking that risk, she met her friend before she reached the rendezvous point and promptly shot her in the face. Now not only would the operation stay a secret, but no one would be looking for her – after all, to the best of everyone's knowledge, she was dead. In the mind of a panicking seventeen-year-old, it was the perfect plan.

Except now that she was on the spot, she blurted out everything. The girl who spent months planning and deceiving and spinning elaborate falsehoods could not tell a lie when it mattered the most.

So Ryan and Esposito locked her up and closed the case that had been their unfortunate distraction from the search for Beckett.

The rest of the next two weeks passed uneventfully. They visited Castle and Beckett whenever they could. They solved a few basic cases, nothing unusual or weird or Beckett-flavored. They kept diligently searching for Cordelia Evans, but turned up nothing. The girl was a ghost.

Until exactly fourteen days after they found Beckett, when a woman approached them, saying, "I'm looking for Detectives Ryan and Esposito."

"You found them," Ryan replied. "Can we help you with something?"

She was tall and skinny, not bad-looking, with elbow-length tangled orange hair tied back in a low ponytail. Her eyes were murky brown, she wore jeans and a gray sleeveless turtleneck sweater, and she dragged a purple suitcase with one hand. When she put her free hand on her hip, she pushed the hem of her shirt up, revealing the gold badge on her belt.

"Special Agent Holly Weisfelt," she greeted. "I'm here to report a murder."


	26. Chapter 26

"Sit down, Agent Weisfelt." Esposito gestured to the chair across from him as he sat down on the couch next to his partner.

"I'll stand," she replied, tapping her foot against the ground. She had both hands wrapped around the mug of coffee they'd made for her from the coffee machine Castle had given them four years ago; she took a small sip before saying, "You probably have a million questions. I'll answer all of them. Just let me start at the beginning."

She took another sip of coffee before she began.

"I was headed to Massachusetts to visit my parents. I was taking the bus, and the first empty seat I came across was next to a woman that I thought I recognized. I'd seen her face on news broadcasts, I thought, but I wasn't sure who exactly she was. So I sat next to her, tried to get close to her. I thought maybe if I acted innocent and dim-witted enough, she'd relax, and maybe she'd slip up and say something she shouldn't. She introduced herself as Felicia Phillips and told me she was heading to visit her sister Anita, who went to college in Boston." She shrugged. "I didn't believe her. There was something about her story that felt like a lie. I wasn't sure what, so I kept talking, tried to get her to say more, but she wasn't particularly talkative.

"We'd been on the bus for a little over a half an hour when she got a phone call. I couldn't hear the person on the other end, but she definitely didn't like them, and she wasn't happy about what they were telling her. She kept correcting them about what her name was, and asking things like 'is it urgent?' and 'where should I meet you?' And as soon as we got off the bus, she bought a ticket right back to New York. I was curious, intrigued, and more than a little bit confused. I didn't have anywhere I needed to be, so I followed her.

"I sat a ways away from her on the bus back, so she wouldn't notice me. And once we'd gotten back to the city, in the bus station, I heard her introduce herself to a man as Quinn Solace."

"I thought you said her name was Felicia Phillips," Ryan interrupted.

"That's what she told me," Holly replied. "At the moment, I didn't know which her real name was, but since this man seemed to know her as Quinn Solace, I guessed that Felicia was the fake. Use of a fake name is suspicious in and of itself, so that made me want even more to know what was going on.

"So I kept following her. She left the station and headed straight for a nearby family-owned diner called Loretta's. She was ordering, and there he was – the same man. I guessed that he was the person who'd called her, the person she was asking where to meet. When he left, she followed him, and he led her around behind the diner. I stayed far enough away that they wouldn't notice me – unfortunately, this meant I couldn't hear what they were saying." She paused for a deep breath and another sip of coffee. "But I heard it when they knocked her out."

Ryan's eyes widened; Esposito demanded, "What?"

"I heard an impact," she continued. "Something heavy hitting something hard. I'd guess they hit her in the head with something."

"Who's 'they'?" Esposito asked.

"The man she'd met at Loretta's," Holly replied. "And another man, a big guy, I couldn't see much of them. By the time I got into the alley, they were carrying her away. They left her suitcase behind." She nodded to the purple bag she'd brought with her. "I took it in case there was something in it that could tell me who she was, headed back to my car, and followed them.

"They walked to a black car, put the woman – Felicia, Quinn, whatever you want to call her - in the trunk. The first guy got into the passenger seat, and the one who knocked her out got in the back. There was a third guy, too, the one driving. They headed to an abandoned warehouse in Harlem, brought the woman inside, and stayed there. That's where they've been for the past two weeks. Sometimes one of the men would leave, sometimes even two of them, but as far as I could tell, at least one of them was always there with the woman, and the first man, the one who lured her behind Loretta's, was never there alone."

Another breath, another sip of coffee. "That is, until today. All three of them just… left. I saw my chance to head inside and check it out, and I took it."

"And this woman – Quinn, Felicia," Esposito said. "She was there?"

"Oh, she was there, alright," Holly agreed. "She was dead."

Neither partner looked particularly shocked. Agent Weisfelt's story had centered around this woman from the beginning – it wasn't surprising that she was the victim of the murder Holly had come to report.

"Thing is," Holly continued after another sip of coffee, "I kept up on the news while I was watching that warehouse. And I'm pretty sure I recognized the woman. Her hair's shorter than in the picture I saw – it's a pixie cut now, light brown – and she's wearing a lot of makeup, but I'm fairly certain. And her name isn't Felicia Phillips or Quinn Solace."

Another sip of coffee. "That's why I came here. Because the news report I saw said that the Twelfth Precinct of the NYPD is currently searching for this woman. Apparently she's wanted for kidnapping – one of your own, no less. A Detective Beckett, yes?"

When she finally sat down, setting her coffee down on the table and leaning towards them, when she breathed out two words – six syllables, thirteen letters – both boys were expecting the name that they heard.

"Cordelia Evans."

-0-0-0-

"Feel up for breakfast, Detective?"

"More like brunch, really," Kate pointed out as she pushed herself up off the couch and shuffled over to the table (she'd been off her crutches for almost a week now).

"It's the first thing you've eaten today," Castle replied. "And you're eating it pretty much right after waking up. Ergo, it is breakfast." He glanced at his watch. "Seriously, though. It's after ten. Thought you were a morning person."

"Not by choice," she said darkly as she pulled out a chair and sat down. "So, what've we got?"

"Bacon, naturally," he replied, setting a plate of the stuff down on the table in front of her and putting down a bowl of scrambled eggs next to it. "Eggs. Hold on a second and I'll get the waffles."

"Castle, this is ridiculous."

"I resent that," he replied. "Alexis is at school, you were sleeping, and perhaps for the first time in my life, I'm ahead of my deadlines. I was bored."

"So you made me brunch," she finished.

"Breakfast," he corrected. "But yes. I made you breakfast."

She shook her head, smiling to herself. "Only you, Castle."

"If you don't want it," he reasoned, setting a plate of waffles, a bottle of maple syrup, and a bowl of cut-up strawberries down on the table, "I'll eat it."

"Please," she scoffed. "Not even you can eat this much food."

"Watch me."

She shook her head again, but still, she picked up the fork at her place and impaled a waffle on it, pulling it onto her plate. "Where's my phone?" she asked as she grabbed the maple syrup bottle, unscrewing the top.

"Over there." Castle gestured back to the kitchen with his head. "It's charging."

"You want to get it for me? I want to call Espo."

"Later," he urged. "Now – breakfast."

Kate sighed, rolling her eyes. "Fine." She carefully dripped syrup out of the bottle, using her fork to methodically spread it evenly over the surface of the waffle. He pushed the bowl of strawberries towards her. She took one on her fork, dropped it onto her waffle, cut out the waffle around the strawberry with the side of her fork, stabbed through the strawberry and the waffle, and put the entire bite in her mouth. Her eyes widened; she chewed quickly, swallowed, and declared, "God, Castle. That's… amazing."

"You thought it would be anything else?" he asked, picking up a waffle on his fork. "Your lack of faith in me is astounding, Beckett." It slipped off before it reached his plate, and he fumbled it in his hands, eventually managing to clumsily drop it onto his plate.

She was laughing at his significant lack of grace when the phone rang.

She started to stand up, but he stopped her, saying, "I'll get it," and pushing out his chair. He stood, walking over to the counter where his home phone sat, and picked it up. "Castle."

"Bro," the voice on the other end replied, and the note of grim, deadly seriousness in the tone pulled Castle up short. "It's Javi. Put Beckett on the phone."


	27. Chapter 27

"She's dead?"

Even before the first word reached her ear over the phone, she'd begun pacing back and forth in the space between the dining room and the kitchen. But when he spoke, just two words, _Cordelia's dead, _she stopped in her tracks. And she stood there, silent, for quite a while – long enough that he ended up asking, "Uh, Beckett? You there?" before she replied with another two-word sentence. A need for confirmation.

Cordelia dead. Gone. Out of this world, away from her, maybe – if she believed in a religion, a deity, an afterlife – facing judgment for the wrongs she committed in her lifetime.

Somehow, it wasn't the victory she'd expected.

"Yeah," Esposito said. "Left in an abandoned warehouse in Harlem. Seemed like she was killed by people she was working with, but we don't know. Haven't checked out the scene yet."

"Then how do you know she's dead?"

"A woman showed up at the precinct," he replied. "And FBI agent by the name of Holly Weisfelt. She found the body."

"Great," Kate sighed. "So I'm guessing the FBI wants in on this one."

"Uh, one second." She heard his voice again, but it was distant, like he'd taken the phone away from his ear. A second later, a barely audible reply came in a female voice, and another second later, he was back on the line.

"Agent Weisfelt says yes," he told her. "But not her, because she doesn't work homicides. They're sending someone else. Someone named Carter."

"Alright." Kate took a deep breath, and continued, saying, "So, what are you telling me all this for?"

"Huh?"

"Sounds like you're all set," she elaborated. "You and Ryan, plus an FBI agent to boot."

"I thought you'd want to know," he replied. "And, also… that you'd want to help."

"Well," she said, "you aren't wrong. What's the address?"

As he gave it to her, she turned to Castle, mouthed "We're going," and walked over to the door to get her shoes and coat. "Has Gates agreed to let me come back to work ahead of schedule?" she asked once he'd finished.

"Not exactly," he replied, and the halting, cautious tone of his voice told her that they hadn't even bothered to run it past her.

"Good enough for me," she said with a shrug. "I'll meet you there in fifteen." As she hung up the phone, she turned back to Castle, who was still standing by the table with a confused expression on his face. "Come on," she urged.

"What's going on?" he shot back.

"They found Cordelia's body."

"What?"

"Actually, technically speaking, an FBI agent named Holly Weisfelt found Cordelia's body."

"Cordelia's _dead_?"

"Apparently," she replied cynically. "Get your shoes on. We're headed to a crime scene."

"Is Gates letting you come back early?" he asked as he headed over to where his shoes sat by the door.

"She hasn't exactly approved it."

"Beckett –"

"I'll deal with Gates later, Castle," she sighed. "Come on. For weeks, all you've been doing is sitting around the house, writing, waiting for a break in the case or for me to go back to work, whichever comes first. And now there's a break in the case – not exactly the break we'd been expecting, but a break nonetheless. You can't honestly tell me you don't want to come check it out."

He paused in the middle of tying a shoe, and told her, "You've got me there. But still, Beckett –"

"I'm going," she stated. "That's final. You can come with me or you can stay here. Your choice."

"Oh, I'm coming," he said. "Someone's got to be there to catch you when you reopen the wounds on your legs."

It could've been a joke were it not for the dead serious tone in Castle's voice. But she couldn't handle serious right now, not from him, so she gave him a wry smile and said, "What, you don't trust Esposito?"

"With my life," he replied without missing a beat. "Not with yours."

But before she could digest the implications of that, he'd finished putting on his shoes and was grabbing his jacket and car keys from the hooks near the door, saying, "I'm driving."

"Oh, no way," she objected, grateful for the opportunity to escape the realm of emotions and honesty and slip back into their natural state of easy banter.

"No arguments from you, my dear Detective," he sang. "You're injured."

"The hell with that, Castle. I can still drive."

"Nope. I'm driving."

"No way!"

"Yes way. You never let me drive. I won't miss this opportunity."

"I think you will. Give me the keys."

"No."

"Keys, Castle!"

"No."

-0-0-0-

She ended up driving them to the scene.

The disgruntled look he wore for the entire ride made her want to laugh – not just because he looked funny, but also because it reminded her of something. Oddly enough, an argument. It reminded her of one of their arguments. Which was weird, because she didn't normally smile while remembering their arguments. But she did this time. He'd been griping, complaining about how everything was a competition with her; how she always needed to be right; how she was always the first one through the door (even in the elevator); how she always had to drive.

Oh, yeah, and they'd been handcuffed together. Fun times.

"Beckett?"

She started slightly as his voice pulled her from her thoughts. Shaking off her moment of disorientation, she took in her surroundings: she was parked outside an abandoned warehouse, and the entire place was swarming with cops. Apparently, even while lost in the vast expanse of her mind and her memories, she'd managed to navigate to the address Esposito had given her.

"You okay?" Castle asked her, his tone concerned. She blinked, swallowed, sucked in her lips and clamped them together with her teeth, and nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"You sure?" he said. "Because – I mean, this can't be easy." And then they both gave half-hearted, shaky laughs, because they both knew just how much of an understatement that was.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I'm – I'll be fine."

She knew he recognized the way she rephrased in the middle of her sentence, made her lie more truthful, but neither acknowledged it. For a while they just sat there, watching the scene before them through the window. She tuned out the muffled noises of police work from outside the car and tried to focus only on the steady, reassuring sound of his breath. She resisted the temptation to crawl into his lap and curl up in his arms, drinking in the warmth and comfort of him and feeling his breath against her skin as he exhaled, against her side as it pushed his chest forward. She contemplated the fact that no, this could not be easy, no, it was not easy, and as much as she wanted to get closure, there were a hundred thousand places she would rather be than right here. She would rather be home, her home. She would rather be at the precinct, doing paperwork and waiting for a body to drop. She would rather be at Castle's loft, eating comfort food and watching reruns of Temptation Lane with him only inches away. Hell, she would rather be stuck in a basement handcuffed to him, waiting for Ryan and Espo to come and get them out. Preferably without the tiger, though.

"Um – Kate?"

His shift to the use of her first name was what dragged her back to reality. For a moment she couldn't figure out what was going on. Nothing strange was happening outside the car. It took her a few seconds to figure it out.

His hand was resting on the compartment between the two front seats.

And her hand was resting on his.

"Oh." She blinked and turned her face away, trying to push back the redness that flooded to her cheeks. "I – sorry, I'm – I'm sorry –" She tried to pull her hand away, but he lifted his and caught her fingers before they could escape.

"It's okay," he said gently; after a few seconds, she dared to look at him again, and saw a soft, reassuring, almost hopeful smile on his face. "Hey," he greeted quietly. "It's okay. You're not in this alone. I'm here."

At this, she tried to lift the corners of her lips slightly in a weak, unsure smile. But as her fingers went from hanging, limp, in his to clasping his hand just as tightly as he was clasping hers, the words that she spoke were confident and strong.

"I know."

His smile widened, and he gave her hand a final squeeze before pulling away and opening his car door. "Come on. Crime scene."

"Right," she agreed, opening her own door and unbuckling her seatbelt. "Crime scene."

Despite the fact that it was nearly summer, the wind that blew in her face and picked up her hair and played with it felt sharp and cold. She shivered, raising her shoulders and wrapping her arms around herself – she hadn't thought to bring a jacket.

"You cold?" Castle asked as he crossed around the car to her. She didn't nod assent, but still, he immediately pulled off his brown coat and draped it around her shoulders; she grabbed onto it without complaint, wrapping it tightly around herself, grateful for the warmth. "Thanks," she whispered, and he replied with, "What are partners for?"

She opened her mouth, though she wasn't sure what she was going to say. Maybe she was simply going to elaborate on her 'thanks'. Or maybe it was more. Maybe she was going to tell him that after four years of solving crime, of nearly dying just inches apart (or even in each other's arms), of opening their mouths to say something only to be cut off… Maybe she was going to tell him that after all of that, he could consider himself more than a partner. Whatever it was she was going to say, he beat her to it.

"Come on," he says, cautiously placing a hand on her shoulder and guiding her towards the warehouse. "Let's go solve us a murder."

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Yes, I stole some dialogue from Always there. I can't help myself. It's just so dang brilliant. I don't own Castle, by the way. In a perfect world, I would. But in a perfect world we would all own spaceships and time machines, good shows would never get cancelled (coughFireflycough), we'd ride everywhere on magical pixie horses, and everyone would get to go to Comic-Con for free. So clearly we're not living in a perfect world.**


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